Maharashtra Home Minister Anil Deshmukh praised a woman police personnel for performing the last rites of four deceased persons, whose bodies were unclaimed bodies during the COVID-19 lockdown in Mumbai. Taking to Twitter on Thursday night, the minister said police naik Sandhya Sheelvant had performed the last rites of four deceased persons in one day and her dedication to her duty was admirable. While some of the deceased were destitutes, one of them had tested positive for COVID-19 and his relatives could not claim the body.

Sheelvant, who is attached to the Shahu Nagar police station in central Mumbai, is responsible for registration of cases of accidental deaths in the area and has to collect unclaimed bodies, send them for post-mortem, trace kin of the deceased and dispose of bodies that remain unclaimed. In wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdown, bodies of destitutes were left unclaimed and kin of some COVID-19 patients were scared of contracting the infection, Sheelvant said.