If you are a Hindu by religion residing at Hazaribagh currently then try to leave the place before your last breath or in simple words ‘don’t die at Hazaribagh’.
This is the humble suggestion of various social and political workers of Hazaribagh. The non-availability of fuel timber at Mukti Dham, Khirgaon aggravated the residents for this protest.
On Wednesday before the local collectorate officials witnessed a strange dharna where several people were sitting with a 'dead body' and waiting for the funeral. Actually it was a way to convey the message of scarcity of fuel timber at Hazaribagh to the higher officials by local CPM workers.
After this dharna Ganesh Kumar Citu, Secretary, CPM, gave a memorandum to the Deputy Commissioner which was addressed to the Governor.
He has written about the condition after the shortage of timber and has demanded immediate steps to supply fuel timber. He also demanded installation of electrical funeral machine at Mukti Dham reminding the Governor that he laid its foundation stone.
like any other town for the last rituals of Hindus there is a main ghat here in Khirgaon Muhalla known as Mukti Dham. Since last ten or more years an organisation named Bhootnath Mandali has taken the responsibility of providing wood at reasonable rate here.
The Bhootnath Mandali purchases wood from the forest depot where nowadays the rate of fuel wood is Rs200 per quintal. After purchasing the wood it is transported to Mukti Dham where some big rooms are made to dump it.
Till February the Bhootnath Mandali was charging the rate of wood Rs400 per quintal and in March they started charging Rs450 per quintal from aggrieved family members. When asked about this hike they said that the forest department is not giving us fuel timber from local depot.
At the end of march the Bhootnath Mandali issued a press release saying that they are now not in a position to provide fuel timber and from first week of April. The members of aggrieved family should have to arrange fuel timber of their own. After this suddenly the price went up to Rs1200 per quintal. But finally the stock ended at now you can see grieved family members roaming from one timber depot to other of the town everyday.
On the other hand, the forest officials claim that they are ready to supply fuel timber to the Mukti Dham as usual but now no one is coming to them for it. They also said that we had given fuel timber to the members of Bhootnath mandali free of cost several times for the cremation of unidentified dead bodies.
When asked about it the member of Murda Kalyan Samiti Md. Khalid Ahmad, Tapas Chakraborty and Vibhu Daa clearly said that we had always paid the cost of fuel timber at Mukti Dham and if anybody says that they had given us timber free of cost then he is lying. All this clearly indicates that something wrong is going on at Mukti Dham where there is acute shortage of fuel timber these days.
It seems that the main cause behind all these is no administrative control on it. So either the administration should take care of it or should notify the advice “don’t die at Hazaribagh”.