Coimbatore Human Rights Forum (CHRF) has urged the State Government to frame guidelines for cremation or burial.

The issue has come up as officials at insist on certificate from a medical practitioner for accepting the body. Doctors were not willing to issue any certificate unless the deceased was under their treatment at the time of death, CHRF chairperson, V P Sarathi said in a statement here.

This created a lot of problems for relatives of the dead and often they were forced to bribe middlemen to get certificates, Sarathi pointed out.

To make matters worse, the Indian Medical Association has instructed doctors not to issue any such certificate for patients not known to them in order to avoid any medico-legal case, he added.

Considering the problem and difficulty being faced by the common man, the Government should immediately frame guidelines for burial or cremation, Sarathi said.