Last Updated on 23/01/2022
In Samanahali, on the outskirts of the Indian city of Bangalore, there are hundreds of bundles wrapped in white cloth and with only slips that have no heirs and their number is increasing with each passing day.
According to the AFP news agency, the ashes were taken along with the rest of the undivided ashes of the southeastern city for a mass immersion ceremony by the river.
The Hindu ritual on the banks of the Kaveri River in the southern state of Karnataka comes at a time when the country’s health system has been paralyzed by the coronavirus, which has killed 160,000 people in the past eight weeks.
In Hinduism, it is believed that the ashes of the dead are released by drowning or shedding ashes in the flowing waters of the river.
No relatives came forward to bury the ashes of the hundreds who died in Bangalore.
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| Hindu Pandits perform last rites of corpses — Photo: AFP |
Workers performing the last rites of the bodies said that some people are so poor that they are unable to perform the rites and others are at risk of contracting the virus because the bodies are being cremated uninterruptedly.
Kiran Kumar, a contractor at Bangalore’s TR Mills crematorium, told AFP that two to three members of a family had died of corona and some were at risk of infection, so they were reduced to ashes.
All this forced the authorities to take matters into their own hands and bury the ashes, and a function was organized in the village of Belka Wadi, about 125 km from Bangalore, led by Hindu priests and Karnataka state official R Ashoka. has been.
Before their immersion, the ashes were placed on the banks of rivers, red flowers were sprinkled on pottery and yellow garlands were decorated around it.
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| The ashes of all these people were poured into the river. Photo: AFP |
Ashoka, the state’s revenue minister, swept away the first of the ashes.
Municipal workers placed the rest in a lightweight boat and sank the vessels, and the ashes of some of them were dumped without the knowledge of the bereaved families.
