COVID-19 scare: Kin of dead elderly woman refuse to attend funeral rites

Ganjam: While COVID-19 is spreading its tentacles, relatives of a dead elderly woman and villagers in Jakarapalli village under Kukudakhandi block of Ganjam district refused to lend a shoulder to carry her body to the crematorium over COVID-19 scare.

After the woman, G. Budiamma (75) died on Monday midnight, her body lied in her house for a few hours. The local panchayat reached her house when villagers informed the people’s representative about the matter.

With the help of some volunteers of Biju Yuva Vahini, the local sarpanch took the woman’s body to the crematorium and performed the last rites.

This is not a lone instance when villagers and relatives declined to lend a shoulder to dead bodies in the district.

Couple of days back the body of a young businessman, who died after suffering from fever, was carried on a trolley rickshaw to crematorium in Buguda NAC area of the district. The youth’s relatives refused to shoulder his body to the crematorium fearing that he died of COVID-19.