Man held for severing head of a body

PUNE: It was a bet that led to a gory incident in which the head of a body in government Sassoon hospital morgue was severed and subsequently dumped into a canal in April, police said on Sunday.
The arrest of one Shoaib Shaikh in connection with a case of dacoity also threw light on the morgue horror during the course of interrogation.
When Shoaib and his two accomplices, involved in a house-breaking in Cantonment area of the city, were having a drinking session, one of them dared Shoaib to enter the morgue and cut head of the dead.
Accepting the challenge, the culprit, a hardened criminal according to police, went to the Sassoon hospital on the night April 3, 2008, managed to go inside the morgue despite the presence of security personnel and severed the head of a deceased identified later as Natir Shaikh.
A row erupted in the hospital when relations of the dead arrived early morning to claim the body which was without the head and refused to take its possession.
The incident caused a flutter in the city and embarrassment to hospital authorities who were blamed for desecration of the dead even as an intensive search by police resulted in the discovery of the severed head in a canal at Hadapsar, a suburban area.
After cutting off the head, the accused took it out of the morgue, showed it to the person who had betted and later threw it in the canal waters, police, who are now looking for Shoaib's accomplices, said.