Express News Service
MADURAI: The deaths of homeless people, commonly termed as 'unknown corpses', touched a five-year low last year in the district, thanks to the Coronavirus pandemic.
According to the data accessed from Government Rajaji Hospital (GRH) through RTI queries over the past years, the number of unknown corpses at GRH in 2020 was 41, which is nearly half of the deaths registered in 2019.
Speaking to TNIE, Director of Idhayam Trust, a city based non-governmental organisation, GR Sivakumar, said that the Covid-induced lockdown was a sort of blessing in disguise as the pandemic helped in rehabilitating many abandoned people.
"Some of them were drug addicts, some were mentally disturbed and others were beggars. In a pre-Covid scenario, we neither had the manpower and infrastructure nor the monetary support to rehabilitate them," he said.