Attorney General urged to commission inquest into ‘birdman’ death after week‑long unnoticed loss in Hyde Park

The death of Bikram Lama, a Nepali rough sleeper affectionately dubbed “the birdman” for his habit of feeding pigeons in Sydney’s Hyde Park, has become the focus of a burgeoning campaign demanding that New South Wales Attorney‑General Michael Daley order a formal inquest, a demand that gained momentum after a Australia investigation disclosed that Lama’s body remained hidden in park vegetation adjacent to a busy thoroughfare leading to St James station for as many as seven days before discovery.

According to the investigation, the prolonged concealment of the corpse occurred despite the park’s high foot traffic and the presence of municipal cleaning crews, suggesting a combination of inadequate surveillance, insufficient coordination among city services, and a broader institutional disregard for the welfare of people experiencing homelessness, a pattern that critics argue has become strikingly predictable.

Former state MP Alex Greenwich, speaking on behalf of advocacy groups, emphasized that an inquest is essential not merely as a symbolic gesture but as a mechanism to dissect the cascade of procedural failures—ranging from delayed health‑service response to the apparent absence of a systematic approach for locating and monitoring vulnerable individuals in public spaces—so that policy reforms can be devised to prevent future occurrences of similar neglect.

While Daley has not yet publicly responded to the appeals, the mounting pressure underscores a systemic tension between proclaimed commitments to public safety and the observable gaps in implementation, a tension that has been repeatedly highlighted by media reports and community organizations alike, and which now demands a concrete investigative response lest the administration be forced to acknowledge that its existing protocols are, at best, insufficiently robust.

In the broader context, the incident invites a re‑examination of how municipal authorities, health agencies, and law‑enforcement bodies interact when addressing the needs of rough sleepers, a re‑examination that, if undertaken earnestly, could reveal whether the current framework merely pays lip service to humanitarian obligations or whether it genuinely equips officials with the tools necessary to act promptly when vulnerable lives are at stake.

Published: April 26, 2026