Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal on Tuesday ordered an inquiry after local news channels telecast images of a man carrying his brother’s body on a cycle purportedly because there was no road in the area that ambulances could use. The incident was reported from the Brahmaputra region’s Majuli, the constituency that Sonowal represents in the Assembly.

Dimple Das was first admitted to a hospital in the headquarters of the Lakhimpur island district. He was diagnosed with a “severe respiratory problem” and died on Monday night, Manik Mili, superintendent at the civil hospital, told The Indian Express.

The 18-year-old patient’s family then decided to bring him to a civil hospital in Garamur and left with his body before the Lakhimpur hospital’s hearse van arrived, Majuli Deputy Commissioner PG Jha told the daily. As their village does not have a motorable road link and “they have to cross a makeshift bamboo bridge to reach the main road to Garamur”, the body had to be carried, he explained.

Sonowal has ordered the director of Manjuli’s Health Services to take stock of the situation and carry out an investigation. Last August, a tribal man from Melghar village in Odisha’s Kalahandi district had to carry his dead wife on his shoulders for nearly 12 km because he could not get a mortuary van from the district headquarter hospital in Bhawanipatna. His plight was captured in videos and photographs.