Repatriation of human remains from the UK to Sri Lanka
This is not the ideal story that I wanted to write or the ideal situation I wanted to be in. However, life always surprises us by putting us into difficult situations and letting us cope with them. A few weeks earlier my father passed away suddenly on one of his visits to the UK. This story is not how I coped with grief because I am certain I am not doing a very good job in there. This is my story of how I brought my father’s dead body to Sri Lanka for the funeral. My hope is that this will help somebody who is going through the same and desperately searching for any resources online regarding this.
Since my father lived in Sri Lanka his whole life, I owed it to him to give him the funeral he deserves at his home back in Sri Lanka, even though it was easier for me to do the funeral in the UK. If you are reading this story and found it via searching for the same thing and still at the stage of deciding what to do, my first advice is to go for it if you can financially afford it. Your loved ones deserve that.
When I faced the same challenge of deciding whether to have the funeral in the UK or in Sri Lanka, all odds were in favor of doing the funeral in the UK. The repatriation process is painstakingly slow and involves a lot of complications. It also costs you a considerable amount of money. If my father could talk, he would definitely argue that it's not worth it. However, I am not the one to make decisions based on facts. I badly wanted to do this one last thing for him.
So here I am on a Saturday morning(my father passed away on Friday night) googling “How to take a dead body to Sri Lanka from the UK”. It was not hard to find the following link. In short, this link is all you need. However, if you need to know in detail the process and read about my experience, do read on.
I was relieved that such a service exists and also learned a new word “repatriation”. You would be surprised how much information you can gather by searching using “repatriation” instead of my previous search query. Upon calling them, I was given some information but was asked to wait until Monday. This is not the answer I wanted to hear. I was literally expecting to hear something like “oh yes, we can do it. we can do it by Monday”. But the reality was a little bit different.
When the funeral director finally contacted me on Monday, they sent the estimated cost (Not the exact same amount as in the link above. The cost depends on where you live in the UK, what kind of coffin or casket you select among other things), and the contract to sign. Their only ask from me is the death certificate of my father. I haven’t lived in the UK enough to know the exact process. The only thing I knew was that the hospital told me when he died on Friday, that they had to consult the procurator fiscal before issuing the certificate. At this point in my mind, the death certificate is this certificate given by the hospital, and later found out it is not.
After consulting the procurator fiscal on Monday, they decided that it is not a coroner’s case and doesn’t require a post mortem.
In this case, the doctor issues a medical certificate stating the cause of death. This is known as “Form 11 — Medical Certificate of Cause of Death”. Since we mentioned that we are bringing the dead body back to Sri Lanka, they also issued a “Freedom from Infection Certificate”. You cannot repatriate a human body out of UK without this.
The next step is the registration of death. You will only get the certificate after this registration. The information on how to do this is given by the hospital. More information on registering a death can be found here.
This is usually done in the registrar’s office. I set an appointment to the latest I can get, which is the next day 3.00 PM. This is a very simple process and took around a maximum of half an hour. But what is important is the things that you want to know when registering death. Since I had all the information with me, it was very easy and I was able to answer the questions they asked. I carried the following with me.
- The original medical certificate was issued by the doctor stating the cause of death.
- Original passport of my father — They need this to get the following information: Name, Birthday, Occupation (if retired they need the occupation before retirement), Address of the usual residence
- Original passport of my mother — They just need to know the name of the spouse and occupation (if retired they need the occupation before retirement).
- A scanned translation of my parent’s marriage certificate — This is not a requirement. However, this helped me to answer the questions like the names and occupations of the parents of the deceased. If you don’t have any document stating those, please make sure you at least have this information in hand before your appointment.
After answering the questions and proofreading that the information is correct, you get three documents.
- Certificate of registration of Death — Form 14
- Abbreviated extract of the death
- Full extract of an entry in a register of death — You can pay extra and get additional copies and this can act as the death certificate
After answering the questions and proofreading the death certificate, you can pay and take extra originals of (3) which I did. My funeral director has asked me to send her two originals of the death certificate. I took around 5 because this might be needed for some other registration processes or proof of death scenarios in Sri Lanka. So make sure you have enough.
So far I have only sent the funeral director the scanned copies of the documents. As soon as I got my hands on the death certificate I was asked to send the originals in a guaranteed delivery post. Here is the set of documents I sent;
- Original passport of deceased
- Two original death certificates
- Form 14
- Freedom from Infection certificate
After this point, everything else will be handled by the funeral director. Upon receiving the scanned copies of the above documents funeral director applied for the “Out of England” permit from the procurator fiscal. The documentation regarding this on the internet is not very centralized. But this is a required document similar to the freedom from infection certificate if you want to get the body out of England. Here are some links I found regarding this.
The process is slightly different for Scotland. In this case, since the embassy needs a coroner’s certificate, our funeral director has taken a “Non-involvement letter” from the procurator fiscal stating that they have no interest in this case and given permission to move the remains out of Scotland.
Once they have this, they can remove the body from the hospital and proceed with the embalming and flight booking. For the flight booking, consignee information is required. This is usually the information on the funeral home back in Sri Lanka who is going to pick up the body from the airport. Once the flight is booked, it means that the booking is accepted, not confirmed. The Airlines need to be able to contact the Consignee to confirm that they will attend the airport to receive the deceased. If you are dealing with a local funeral director, make sure that the telephone number of the consignee you submit is correct with all the international codes and they speak English. Once the airline gets the confirmation from the consignee, the booking is confirmed. After the flight is booked, we were given the cargo booking number (AirWay Bill number) which can be used to track the shipment on the carrier’s website. In our case, it is Emirates Sky Cargo.
For the embalming it has to be in international standards and an embalming certificate should be issued which is also a requirement to repatriate human remains out of the UK.
The next step is certifying the documents from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and Sri Lanka High Commissions. The following link has the full list of certificates. This is also done by the funeral director. However, you have to give permission to the funeral director to act on your behalf.
Here is the list of documents you need for the Foreign and Common Wealth Office and Embassy Approval.
- Death Certificate
- Coroner’s Certificate/ Post-mortem Certificate — This is usually the Out of England certificate by the Coroner
- No Infection Certificate
- Embalming Certificate
- Original current Sri Lankan passport with visa status: Foreign & Commonwealth Office certification is not applicable
- Flight Details: Foreign & Commonwealth Office certification is not applicable.
When we call the high commission we received mixed responses on if anything should be done from the Sri Lanka side. However, the foreign ministry website has these links on the repatriation of human remains to Sri Lanka. Please note that we didn’t do anything regarding this.
When the above-given certificates are approved by the embassy, the funeral director sent us the scanned copies and asked us to send those to the consignee who is receiving the body in Sri Lanka. This is a good time for you to book the cemetery or crematorium in Sri Lanka for the funeral. For that, you would need the registrar to issue a notice of death. In our case, it required a Sinhala translation of the death certificate.
The next step of transporting the body with the original documents to the airport and submitting them to the air cargo is done by the funeral director. We kept an eye on the emirates air cargo tracker which gives real-time updates on the status
When the body is received in Sri Lanka, it needed to be picked up by the consignee you provided (meaning the funeral director in Sri Lanka). We had one family member with the funeral home employee to pick up the body. It had to be picked up at the cargo village at Bandaranaike International Airport.
We had one problem that the employee of the funeral home did not have his employee identity card with him. So we had to get an employment confirmation letter emailed from the funeral home. This has to be a letter (on a letterhead) which states that the person (with full name and national id number) is an employee of the consignee funeral home.
After the consignee got cleared, the airport doctor has to decide whether it needs a post mortem and free from infections and ready to release. After this, it is sent to custom clearance. All of this procedure took around 4 hours.
Once the body is received by the funeral home, we wanted to change the coffin to a traditional Sri Lankan coffin and change the clothes. This needed the body to come to room temperature as it has been frozen. This procedure also took around 6–7 hours. So if you are planning to bring the body to Sri Lanka, do not plan the funeral on the same day.
If you are going through the same process and need any help or have any questions, please comment here and I will get back at the earliest.
