Cost of transporting bodies forces kin of Covid victims to abandon last rites

DHARMAPURI: Relatives of the deceased are doing away with traditional ceremonies, such as performing last rites, and are instead just getting the bodies cremated, say officials of Dharmapuri municipality. In the past week, over 120 bodies were cremated at the municipality crematorium.

To deal with the rising demand for cremation, the municipal authorities have formed special teams to perform last rites and cremate bodies for a minimum charge. 

Not all the deceased, however, are Covid victims or people from Dharmapuri, says a municipality staff. Over 40 per cent of those whose bodies were cremated at the crematorium on SV Road were from other districts, he points out.

Many of the deceased were patients who were brought from Tirupattur, Tiruvannamalai, Krishnagiri, Salem, and Kancheepuram to get treated at the Dharmapuri Medical College Hospital (DMCH) for non-Covid ailments. “At most, we get only one Covid victim a day,” the municipality staff says.

Other staff point out that families are hesitant to spend huge sums of money to transport bodies to their hometowns for the last rites. Ambulance operators have hiked their rates, more so because of the restrictions on inter-district travel, so people prefer to use the crematorium here, municipality staff say.

A man from Krishnagiri said: “We brought my father to DMCH, and though he didn’t die of Covid, only a few relatives expressed an interest in participating in a funeral. So we opted for the crematorium here.”