Belagavi City Corporation officers had to take the body of a COVID-19 patient back from a burial ground after some residents opposed the burial in the Lingayat burial ground in Sadashiv Nagar in Belagavi on Sunday, insisting that the body can only be cremated as per protocol.
Corporation personnel had taken the body of the 60-year-old patient who died of COVID-19 complications in the district hospital to the burial ground in Sadashiv Nagar.
The former corporator and president of the burial ground managing committee Sarala Herekar, who heard of this, rushed to the spot and stopped the process. She took away the key of the earthmover that was brought to dig a pit to bury the body.
She asked the personnel not to bury the body in the Sadashiv Nagar burial ground. “I will not allow any COVID-19 burials here. I ask the officers to take all COVID-19 bodies for cremations in the Maratha crematorium or the government crematorium in Wadagaon and other places,” she said.
She argued that government rules do not allow the burial of COVID-19 bodies and that they mandated only cremation of such bodies. She also complained that the personnel who came to bury the body were not wearing personal protection equipment (PPE). She also objected to the presence of the dead person’s relatives in the burial ground, saying that that was prohibited.
She also said that she was returning the earthmover’s keys as Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee working president Satish Jarkiholi had called her asking her to release the vehicle.
The officers were forced to take the body back. The dead patient was a relative of a Belagavi-based lawyer. The lawyer and his friends later took the body and carried out the burial in the Kalmath burial ground in the city.
Meanwhile, corporation officials said that the government’s COVID-19 protocol does not prohibit burials. “The Standard Operating Procedure only lays out a method for burials, that have to be carried out by authorised persons wearing PPE. It does not mandate cremations,” said a corporation officer.