Gaya: A man found his father's left ear missing on Friday after the body was kept at the Anugrah Narayan Medical College Hospital's emergency ward on Thursday night.

The hospital is the only tertiary treatment centre covering the crore-plus people of the five districts of Magadh division - Gaya, Aurangabad, Nawada, Jehanabad and Arwal. Besides Magadh division, patients from Chatra and Koderma districts of neighbouring Jharkhand too come to the hospital.

On Thursday, Raj Kumar Prasad, 62, a resident of the Civil Lines area of the town was admitted to the hospital with a complaint of organophosphate poisoning. Later that evening, the man died. According to the hospital superintendent SK Sinha, being a medico-legal case, the attendants abandoned the body and disappeared.

Next morning, Raj Kumar's son went to the hospital and raised an alarm making about one of the ears missing. He said as the body lay abandoned during the night in a remote corner of the emergency ward of the hospital, rodents gnawed away at the ear.

Magadh divisional commissioner Jitendra Srivastav said he had received a complaint about the missing ear of one of the patients who died in the hospital on Thursday evening. Jitendra said he has ordered an inquiry and a showcause notice has been served on the health manager, the medical officer and the duty nurse. Action will be taken against those found guilty, added Srivastav.

But according to sources, the inquiry has hit a roadblock as while handing over the body to the attendants after a post-mortem on Friday, the hospital personnel did not get the body videographed/photographed and as such evidence collection has become a big challenge.

Hospital superintendent Dr SK Sinha said he was gathering facts as he was on leave on Friday. The superintendent denied the charge that the body was kept on the emergency ward floor. "The body was kept on the stretcher and the area was properly netted," Sinha said.

It has to be found out how rodent/s managed to enter the otherwise protected area, said the superintendent.

Jitendra said the emergency ward needed better upkeep and management. He has called the building division superintending engineer. A 50-bed state-of-the-art emergency ward is under construction, said the commissioner.

The hospital is in a shambles, said RTI activist Brajnandan Pathak. "Even toilets are a luxury in the hospital. Outdoor patients and attendants have to defecate here and there on the hospital premises as the toilets are not enough for the indoor patients and hospital staff," Pathak said.