India leads the world in the number of registered medical institutions and produces the largest number of medical doctors in the world. Not with standing this, India struggles the concerns of cadaver shortage, patient unavailability (in hospitals), lack of medical equipment’s/ instruments, shortage of medical personnel and medicines which is largely due to the malfunctioning of Indian Regulatory bodies and flawed Educational, Healthcare and Judiciary policies. Few authors have written on the prevailing deficiencies in the Indian policies especially the ‘Anatomy Acts’ but failed to correlate them with the ‘Indian Judiciary Regulations’ and provide radical solutions to ensure an uninterrupted supply of cadavers to medical institutions for academic and research purpose. The objective of our article is to review the policies and acts enacted by the Indian Educational, Healthcare and Judiciary policies pertaining to the disposal of unclaimed dead bodies both, prior to COVID-19 and during COVID -19 pandemic period.

Keywords: Unclaimed bodies; COVID-19 pandemic; Anatomy acts; Health care policies; Judiciary policies; Cadaver shortage; Medical education; Medical ethics; Regulatory bodies.