The government is spending Tk 3,000 everyday on preserving bodies of two Indians and a Nepalese who died whilst serving their prison sentence in Bangladesh jails in 2010.
'We have sent letters to the authorities of the relevant countries through the home ministry every month about the bodies but the authorities are yet to respond,' the inspector general (prisons) Brigadier General Md Ashraful Islam Khan told New Age.
He said that the jail authorities had to keep the bodies in the mortuaries until a response from the host countries is received.
'If the countries respond claiming the bodies, the relevant governments will have to pay the mortuary fee but if they do not, we will have to bear the cost,' he added.
He also said that the bodies would eventually have to be buried in Bangladesh in case no one seeks recovery of the bodies.
Jag Narayan who came from Kapur Fubuya of Kathmandu in Nepal died in a Chittagong hospital on August 1, 2010 and Sen Swapan, from Madhya Gram municipality in West Bengal, died in Dhaka Medical College Hospital on August 31, 2010.
Sohye Uddin from Dasgram Kandi of Karimganj in Assam in India died in Diabetic Hospital in Sylhet on May 14, 2011.
According to the prisons directorate, 740 foreigners are now imprisoned in Bangladeshi jails — 393 from Myanmar, 314 from India, 19 from Pakistan, 5 from Nepal, 3 from Tanzania, and 1 each from Saudi Arabia, Japan, Australia, Nigeria and Hungary.
Nearly a third of these people, however, have served their sentence, said the prison officials. They include 157 Indians and 60 Myanmar citizens, most of whom were arrested for smuggling drugs or illegally entering Bangladesh.
'We send the necessary papers every month to our home ministry's external department but it cannot respond to us as the embassies concerned pay no heed,' the IGP (prisons) added.
Source : New Age
