Title - Burnt remains on display

A signboard standing next to four glass bottles containing a charred hand and a leg and other burnt human remains in preservative solution screams: Pl help us to identify these people.The signboard at Nellore Government Hospital has been attracting hundreds of visitors since Tuesday. A reward has been lined up for whoever provides correct information.The body parts were recovered from the middle berths of the Tamil Nadu Express’s S11 compartment that caught fire in the wee hours of July 30, killing 32 people who were either asleep or could not escape as most exits had jammed in the heat.A probe by railway safety commissioner Dinesh Kumar Singh has revealed that most passengers in the tail-end berths of S11 managed to escape but those in the middle got trapped in the fire. So far, over 200 travellers and railway staff have been questioned.Four more bodies are lying unidentified in the district hospital morgue, over one of which — it has a part of a sixth finger on one hand — two families are fighting. Rail officials plan to do a DNA test to confirm its identity and compensate the bereaved family.South Central Railway officials said the condition of nine of 28 injured people was serious.While one Sambashiv Rao was in a Chennai hospital, 13 were in three hospitals in Nellore town. The rest have been sent to their native places in special ambulances.Some families are still searching for their relatives. The assistant registrar of Kakatiya University, Gauri Shankar, is hunting for son Avinash. One Malkit Singh from Punjab, headed to Chennai for navy training, had a berth in S-3 but got burnt to death with his friends in S-11.

Railway officials said they had literally “scraped” train seats to get DNA profiles of bodies to facilitate identification and stall false compensation claims.“We are trying our best to identify people correctly,” a railway protection force officer said.