2 days for Pak to claim bodies

ATIR KHAN

NEW DELHI, JANUARY 7: Delhi Police, in consultation with the Union Home Ministry, has set January 10 as the deadline for the disposal of five bodies of the alleged Pakistan-backed militants involved in Parliament attack. The corpses have been lying in the Sucheta Kriplani Hospital mortuary for the past 23 days.

If there is no claimant by then, the authorities might opt for a skull superimposition technique to decide once and for all if Mohammed — who had led the Parliament attack — is indeed Burger, one of the hijackers of IC-814.

Delhi Police Commissioner Ajay Raj Sharma today said that the bodies of five Jaish-e-Mohammad militants who have been identified as Mohammed, Raja, Hamza, Rana and Haider on the basis of the statements by two of their alleged accomplices Afzal and Shaukat, have been embalmed.

It has been two weeks since the Government asked Pakistan to claim the bodies. While Pakistan has asked for evidence, the police claim to have collected fool-proof evidence to fix the identities of the slain men.

Meanwhile, Delhi Police have claimed that Afzal identified Mohammad, one of the slain militants in the Parliament House shootout, as Burger.

The Government might have to go for the skull superimposition technique to fix his identity. In this technique, the skull of the person is matched with the photograph of the person in question. The photograph is blown to the scale of the skull size and is then superimposed on the skull with the help of a computer.

If the features match then the identity of the person could easily be established. This test is often conducted by the Central Forensic Science Labs, mostly in cases where a body is discovered after a long time. Experts say the test is reliable. Sources say Central Intelligence agencies have a photograph of Burger in their possession.