Mumbai: Nearly nine years after a Colaba resident launched a campaign over the shocking condition of the St George Hospital’s mortuary, located in Fort, the hospital is set to inaugurate a new ₹5-crore facility on Tuesday, ending a long civic battle marked by bureaucratic delays, site disputes and infrastructure hurdles.
Built with state government funding, the new facility replaces the hospital’s old mortuary, which had long been criticised for poor conditions. Hospital authorities said the upgraded mortuary will also serve as a teaching centre for undergraduate medical students.
St George’s Hospital medical superintendent Vinayak Sawardekar said, “It will be a mortuary housing official facilities. There will be capacity for 24 bodies, with a viewing gallery where undergraduate students will view dissection. There will also be teaching facilities developed for MBBS students.”
He added that it is the first such facility in the public healthcare system.
The project traces its roots to May 2017 when Colaba-based chartered accountant Renu Kapoor visited the hospital to collect the post-mortem report of her driver. Disturbed by what she described as the mortuary’s unhygienic and dilapidated condition, Kapoor began raising the issue with hospital authorities and government departments.
What followed was a prolonged campaign by Kapoor and a group of 34 citizens, backed at different stages by former corporator Makarand Narwekar and MLA Rahul Narwekar. The group held multiple meetings, submitted representations and gathered public support, including nearly 98,000 signatures through an online petition.
While administrative approval for the project came in 2018, the mortuary’s journey was far from smooth. Plans had to be altered after the originally identified site could not be used, while disputes involving subleased premises led to further design changes.
Construction was completed in 2024 but the facility remained shut due to delays in electricity approvals. Later, parts of the designated entry and exit route for hearses had to be cleared after families who had settled there during the Covid-19 period occupied the space.
Kapoor said the completed facility has the potential to become a benchmark for public hospitals.
“It is a state-of-the-art facility which shall now serve as a flagship mortuary for all the government hospitals in India,” Kapoor told HT.
With the final clearances now in place, the mortuary is expected to become operational after its formal inauguration on Tuesday.
