Panaji, November 18:The Goa police Wednesday admitted that the body of Russian teenager Elena Sukhonova, who was found dead along a railway track in May, has decomposed beyond recognition. A relative of the girl has blamed the mortuary where her body has been kept for seven months.
“The body which was in cut pieces has become darkened due to fungus moisture retention,” Superintendent of Police Atmaram Deshpande said at a press conference, adding that a DNA test was the only way in which the body could be identified.
“Some blood relation will have to come here so that a DNA match can be done. We already have a DNA sample of the deceased,” he said.
Earlier, Sukhonova’s brother-in-law Dmitry Voronov alleged that her body had decomposed beyond recognition in the mortuary.
Advocate Vikram Varma, speaking on behalf of Voronov, said the malfunctioning mortuary at the Goa Medical College, where the body was stored, had resulted in the extreme state of decomposition.
“The entire face is decomposed, with fungus all over the body. This seems to be the fallout of inadequate facilities with the morgue,” Varma said.
Voronov is in Goa to complete the formality of identification of the dead teenager and to lay the remains to rest, Varma said. The advocate said that Elena’s features were beyond recognition due to high decomposition and that the only way to identify the body now was through a DNA test.
When contacted, E.J. Rodrigues, a forensic specialist at the Goa Medical College, refuted the charge levelled by Varma.
“There cannot be a morgue failure. The body was in a bad shape when it was brought to the morgue,” Rodrigues said.
The mysterious death of the Russian teenager in May this year and the subsequent reports of a police cover up in the local media had brought back memories of the Scarlett Keeling murder and the suspect police investigations in the preceding year.
On May 8, Sukhonova’s mutilated body was found on the rail tracks some kilometres from the Thivim railway station in North Goa.
While police claimed that Elena, who was holidaying in Goa, had fallen off a Mumbai-bound train, railway officials claimed she could not have landed under the wheels of the train she was travelling in.
Voronov, while speaking to a section of the media Tuesday, said he suspected that Elena was murdered.
———————–IANS