In a shocking lapse of administerial duties, a suburban hospital mixed up two patients and actually told a family to conduct the last rites of a dead person, saying he was their relative.

Later though, after two days, the family learnt that their father was alive and admitted to the Intensive Care Unit and they had conducted the last rites on somebody else. Another family learnt that it was their relative who had died, but the last rites were conducted by somebody else. This huge and tragic mix-up resulted in unbelievable psychological stress and anguish for the two families. In the front-page report in this paper, the hospital authorities said that four patients had died on the same day.