It’s every family’s worst nightmare: what happens if your loved one’s remains get switched during the cremation process, and you receive the wrong set of remains? Well, this worst-case-scenario recently happened in India, and it highlights the need for special care during every step of the cremation process.
Morgue Attendants Send the Wrong Body for Cremation
In a horrific story last week in India, it was revealed that a hospital in Bangalore handed over the wrong body to a family for cremation because of a striking resemblance between two different patients. The family went forward with the cremation, mistakenly believing that they had their loved one’s remains. Hospital authorities recognized the problem only after the rightful claimants of the body turned up. A frantic search for the remains ensued before the hospital realized they had given the remains to the wrong family.
This kind of issue is shocking for everyone involved. The family who had claimed the remains and had already completed cremation had performed elaborate rituals to say farewell to their loved one. The family whose remains were improperly claimed was denied the opportunity to perform their own rituals, and was left without the opportunity to say their own goodbye. This is a family’s worse nightmare when it comes to arranging cremation, and it’s a rare occurrence – but it does happen.
The Smart Assurance Identification System Avoids This Issue
This type of issue highlights the need for the Smart Assurance Identification System. The Smart Assurance Identification System is our chain of custody system to ensure your loved one is continuously monitored from the time that he or she is taken into our care and throughout the cremation process. With this chain of custody system, we eliminate issues of wondering who has the remains or where the remains are in the process. We carefully monitor your loved one at every step in the cremation process, thus avoiding mistakes like this.
When you’re saying farewell to a loved one, you’re completely within your rights to require a certain level of assurance and peace of mind as the remains travel through any end-of-life preparation process. At Smart Cremation, we understand how valuable that peace of mind can be, and we’d never want to see anyone put through what those Indian families had to face after the remains were switched. Processes, and a high level of attention to detail, is what sets Smart Cremation apart from other cremation providers.
