Keonjhar: In a poignant and deeply moving gesture, police in Odisha’s Keonjhar stepped forward to light the funeral pyre of a young man on Sunday after his own family disowned his body and refused to perform his cremation.
According to sources, the deceased, originally a resident of the Cuttack district, had reportedly left home following his marriage to a woman from a different caste. The youth subsequently underwent religious conversion.
After recovering the body, Keonjhar Town Police initiated an investigation and successfully identified the deceased. After establishing contact with the youth’s family, the police attempted to hand over the body. However, citing his inter-caste marriage and subsequent religious conversion, the family flatly refused to accept or touch the remains. Despite prolonged counselling and mediation efforts by the police to convince both sides of the extended family, they remained completely unyielding.
Faced with a sensitive impasse, the Keonjhar Town Police reached out to a local social service organisation, ‘Bharasa Parivar’, for assistance.
On Sunday, volunteers from the NGO, alongside police personnel, transported the body to Keonjhar Garh Adarsha Crematorium at Shiripur and ensured that the youth was given a dignified farewell. In a deeply moving gesture that transcended conventional boundaries, Police Outpost officer Anam Mahant personally stepped forward to light the funeral pyre in accordance with traditional Hindu rituals.
This comes days after police personnel performed the last rites of a woman after her two sons fought over the funeral and left the body unattended at a village in Odisha’s Balasore district.
