A prominent GTA funeral parlour skimped on chemicals while embalming hundreds of corpses, causing bodily fluids to seep from the deceased as loved ones looked on during visitations, Ontario’s funeral home watchdog alleges.

Benisasia Funeral Home, which will remain open pending a tribunal ruling on pulling its licence, is the subject of a slew of allegations, including accusations that the business cut corners while embalming nearly 400 bodies; owes money to coroners; and misled investigators about where it kept cremated remains.

Benisasia’s owner denies these allegations.

Meanwhile, Ontario’s Board of Funeral Services agreed to lift its Jan. 6 suspension of Benisasia’s Mississauga and Toronto funeral homes.

The two funeral homes will be allowed to reopen under the strict condition that daily operations are handled by a manager selected by the board. Doug Simpson, the board’s registrar, said it is still pushing to permanently revoke Benisasia’s licences, saying consumers are at risk.

“One of the terms will be that the individuals who own this organization will not be involved in the day-to-day operation of it,” Simpson said. “We are satisfied that the public will be dealing with an organization that is overseen by someone we can feel confidence in.”

The funeral home’s owner, Prabhjot Kaur Johal, is appealing the board’s plan to revoke the licences before the provincial Licence Appeal Tribunal. The allegations have not been proven.

Johal’s lawyer, Harris Rosen, spoke to the Star on her behalf. He said her appeal documents address the board’s accusations, and the temporary agreement to keep Benisasia operating is not an admission of wrongdoing.

Johal’s documents call the regulator’s bid to revoke Benisasia’s licences apparent retribution for an earlier protracted legal battle in which Johal was stripped of her funeral director licence for falsifying embalming records.

The investigators’ new allegations of scrimping on chemicals while embalming bodies rely largely on the testimony of a former Benisasia manager. Johal’s appeal states that the former employee lacks credibility because she was once convicted of drug trafficking.

The former Benisasia employee told the board the funeral home used far less than the required amount of embalming chemicals, according to the board’s suspension letter. Other staff told the board bodies “regularly” leaked fluids during funeral services and visitations.

This leaking, known as “purging,” occurs when tissue and organs have been insufficiently embalmed and begin to decompose, producing gas that pushes odious bodily fluids out of a corpse’s orifices.

“When a body is purging, we teach that it is embalming failure,” said Jeff Caldwell, who teaches embalming at Humber College’s funeral services program.

“The embalming process is to stop that from happening.”

Family members would have to ask staff to wipe the fluids from their loved one’s face in the middle of funeral services, former staff told the board. They told investigators they were instructed to put towels around the neck of corpses to protect “against the body purging overnight,” Simpson said in the suspension letter. Johal’s appeal cites a current staff member who said he never had to do either of these things.

The former manager, who oversaw daily operations at Benisasia’s Mississauga home, told the board Johal disregarded her request for “proper chemicals to guard against a body purging or having an odour.” Johal denies this happened.

The board’s letter says Benisasia funeral home scrimped on the amount of chemicals it should have bought to properly embalm the 378 bodies it treated in 2012.

Following embalming practices provided by the former employee, the board calculated it would take more than 1,500 bottles of chemicals to adequately preserve those 378 bodies. Records show the funeral home bought just 396 bottles that year — a discrepancy of more than 1,100 bottles.

“The (board of funeral services) is concerned about this shortfall and that bodies being embalmed at Benisasia may not be properly embalmed and that consumers are being charged for inferior or substandard services,” Simpson said in the letter suspending Benisasia’s licence.

Lacking these necessary supplies, the former manager said she would “short change” water in the chemical tank to make the chemicals last longer.

In her appeal documents, Johal called the former employee’s calculation of the amount of chemicals needed grossly inflated and “totally wrong.” The funeral home said roughly half that amount is needed for a normal embalming.

The board “is relying upon the evidence of a convicted narcotics trafficker,” Johal’s documents say, referring to the former manager. The Star was unable to confirm this conviction.

Johal was never directly involved in the embalmings and never gave instructions to use fewer chemicals than needed, her appeal documents say.

The documents said Benisasia has never received any complaints from bereaved families about bodies purging.

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“Consumers are not being charged for inferior or substandard services,” the documents say.

Humber’s Caldwell said the chemical calculations of both Benisasia and the former employee are inconsistent with what he teaches students.

While the former employee’s calculation calls for more than the necessary amount of chemicals to arterially preserve tissue, he said the funeral home’s numbers underestimate the amount needed to harden cavities and preserve organs — a crucial step “to prevent a purge from occurring in the first place.”

This is not the first time Benisasia’s owner, Johal, has been caught up in controversy over embalmings.

In 2011, the Licence Appeal Tribunal ordered the board to strip Johal of her funeral director licence, after ruling she falsified embalming records to take credit for work actually done by an intern.

The board’s current case before the tribunal accuses Johal of a glaring “lack of honesty and integrity” in her role as funeral home owner, accusing, among other things, she failed to pay suppliers and coroners.

Part of the fee a bereaved family pays to a funeral home covers the services provided by the coroner, such as preparing a death certificate.

Simpson said Benisasia owes money to several coroners for work already done, which suggests that in some cases, Benisasia may have pocketed the cash paid by grieving families.

“Presumably, in some cases, those fees would be charged already, and may have been collected,” Simpson said in an interview.

In her appeal documents, Johal says coroners are still signing cremation certificates for Benisasia and all accounts are in good standing.

In another instance, former staff members told the board cremated remains were being kept in a closet, though board inspectors were repeatedly told there were no cremated remains in the building. On one occasion, the board alleges, Johal told employees to move car parts from the Kia dealership next door into the closet to give the appearance it was used as storage for the dealer.

Only after an inspector found ashes in an office in February 2013 did Benisasia produce a list of 44 cremated remains in the building.

Johal’s appeal says Benisasia’s record-keeping was affected by flooding last summer.

“There was never any attempt to mislead anyone about cremated remains,” the appeal says.

The next hearing on Benisasia’s licence revocation will take place Jan. 24.