A day after a man in Odisha was seen carrying his wife's body on shoulders, an incident of taking a body through chest-deep water has come to the fore in Jabalpur on Friday. Some people in a village of Jabalpur district carried a woman's body for cremation through chest-deep water in a pond.
They said they were forced to do so as upper caste people refused to let them pass through their field, but the administration has said the villagers created a scene perhaps to highlight a grievance.
Sources claimed that members of the weaker community were forced to take the funeral procession through the pond water because the dominant community refused to let it pass through their field. However, unaware of the incident, Jabalpur District Magistrate Mahendra Chandra Chaudhary said that he would look into the incident which took place in Behar village of Panagar tehsil (sub-district). The mourners were taking for cremation the body of Kantibai, 70, a woman belonging to Patel community which is an Other Backward Class (OBC). She had died on Thursday. Chaudhary later said his inquiry showed that the funeral procession being taken through the pond was clearly a created scene. He said he found that the thoroughfare to the cremation ground was indeed flooded with 3-4 feet water, but other approaches to the cremation ground were clear of water. “There is clearly a passable path along a farm that the mourners actually used to carry wood and cowdung cakes to the cremation ground, but they chose the flooded street to carry the body through," Chaudhary added.