In a tenure of eight years Edhi Foundation have buried more than 58,000 bodies from 2005-2012. These bodies were unclaimed and hence Edhi foundation buried them in graveyards after taking pictures and maintaining a data base for future identification.
In total Edhi foundation buried 58,261 bodies, yearly breakup of the burials is as follows:
2005: 12,561 bodies
2006: 4,819
2007: 6,611
2008: 6,692
2009: 6,491
2010: 6,493
2011: 7,854
2012: 6,738
Recently CPLC launched ‘Shanakht Project’ to identify the unclaimed corpses at Edhi and Chhipa morgues through NADRA data. The project was started from October 2015 and till April 2017 they processed 1,898 bodies from which 1,067 were successfully identified.
The process of identification requires thumb fingerprints through which NADRA data is sorted, but in bomb blasts and other accidents where fingerprints are lost the process doesn’t work.
In western world DNA testing and data bases are used to identify such bodies but unfortunately in Pakistan no such system exists.