Indonesian hospital calls on family of Scot to collect his body

A hospital in Indonesia has called upon the family of a Dundee man to retrieve his body, which has lain in a morgue for over three months.

The passport of Scott Roddie, 52, a UK citizen whose body is being held in the morgue of an Indonesian Hospital. (thejakartapost.com/Fadli)

The Batam Authority (BPK) Hospital in Jakarta received the body of UK citizen Scott Roddie, 52, after he died of natural causes on 10th February.

Mr Roddie’s body was given to the morgue by the country’s Police intelligence division and the Awal Bros Hospital where the Scot had died while undergoing medical treatment.

The Head of the Hospital’s morgue Rian Narulita told thejakartapost.com that the hospital was unsure why the body hadn’t yet been picked up by either his family or the UK Embassy in the capital, she said: “We keep calling on the police and Interpol to provide certainty [on when the body will be picked up] because it has been here too long.”

“We don’t know what the problem is, neither his family nor the UK Embassy in Jakarta have yet picked up the body. We are really worried about the condition of the body,”

She explained that based on standard procedures, a body entrusted to their care could be kept in cold storage for three months at a maximum. Though it is possible to hold the body for longer, up to six months, due to the cold-storage facility having being opened several times during the course of time he has been kept there, there is no guarantee his body will not deteriorate.

There was also concern that the hospital needed the space and that the cost of storing the body had already cost the hospital authority around £1,000, Rian added: “We want the body to be immediately picked up because BPK Hospital has only eight corpse cold-storage facilities. It is the only hospital in Riau Islands that has a corpse cold-storage facility,”

A spokesperson for the hospital said: “We treated it differently because he’s a foreigner. According to our existing procedures, we bury a body if no family member picks it up within a month. But this is for Indonesians. The problem is, the UK Embassy has not yet given any helpful information for us to decide [what to do with the body],” said Wawan.

The UK Embassy in Indonesia has yet to provide comment on the matter.

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