Lucknow, March 7 : In a bizarre situation, the bodies of two women having similar names, were accidentally swapped at the King George's Medical University's (KGMU) mortuary here on Wednesday.

According to police, confusion arose after post-mortem examination of the bodies of two women, Sandhya Prajapati (26) and Sandhya Trivedi (24).

The mortuary staff omitted surnames from the autopsy reports, leading to the mix-up.

Trouble began when Vipin Prajapati arrived to claim his wife's body and found it had been taken away by somebody else. When Prajapati and his family created a ruckus at the mortuary, the staff rummaged through the files and found that Sandhya Prajapati's body had been handed over mistakenly to Sumit, brother of Sandhya Trivedi.

Angry family members locked the gates of the mortuary and it took police intervention to get them opened.

Sandhya Trivedi had consumed poisonous substance and died late Monday night during treatment at the trauma centre. After her death, her in-laws fled the scene, abandoning the body at the trauma centre, said police.

Sandhya Trivedi's brother Sumit and father Amarnath along with other family members reached the trauma centre to take the body after the inquest was filled. The autopsy could not be done on Tuesday and was completed on Wednesday, but staff handed over the body of Sandhya Prajapati to Sumit.

Additional DCP, West Zone, Vishwajeet Srivastava, said that Sumit and his family went ahead and cremated the body of Sandhya Prajapati at Gulala Ghat crematorium.

Sumit told police he was grief-stricken, so did not see the face and ended up cremating someone else.

Meanwhile, when the mix-up was discovered, Vinay Prajapati and his family rushed to Gulala Ghat but the cremation had already taken place by then.

Families of the deceased created a ruckus at the mortuary that lasted several hours.

Later, police pacified the families and Sumit handed over the ashes of Sandhya Prajapati to her family and took his sister's body and cremated her.

Meanwhile, the KGMU Spokesman said that after post mortem, the bodies are handed over to the police which give it to the kin of the deceased.

'The mix up took place probably because of similar names but KGMU is not responsible for it,' he said.

/IANS