Locals prevent burial of Covid-19 victim in Bengaluru

An angry mob on Thursday threw stones at an ambulance carrying an 86-year-old Covid-19 victim and prevented his family from burying his body at a graveyard in
M S Palya in Bengaluru.

The man died at Baptist Hospital on Thursday morning and his family, who are residents of Vasanthnagar, had secured permission to bury the body at their church graveyard. However, a group of angry residents stopped the ambulance at the site.

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According to an eyewitness, the crowd of about 50 residents brought in a bulldozer and rolled two sewer concrete pipes across the entrance of the cemetery, blocking access.

The incident occurred around 11 am, said Mohammed Ismail (30), a techie and coordinator for the NGO Mercy Angels which was transporting the body. “As soon as the ambulance pulled up and our staff stepped out with PPEs, a crowd appeared from nearby streets and attempted to throw stones at the ambulance,” Ismail said.

Vidyaranyapura Police Inspector Praveen Kumar Y L, who arrived at the scene soon after, described locals as being angry and apprehensive that a Covid body had been brought to the area. “They complained that the disease would spread from the burial site to their homes,” he said, adding that his attempts to inform them that the body would be placed inside a 15-foot-deep and sanitised grave fell on deaf ears.

“The locality is a slum. On top of this, the graveyard is not a designated Covid-19 burial ground. No Covid bodies have been buried there before,” he said.

“There is no such thing as a designated burial ground,” Ismail said, adding that Covid burials in Christian sites have attracted some controversy from locals in the past few weeks, but nothing on the scale of what had transpired on Thursday. “The family of the deceased was devastated by the reception,” he said.

Police said they persuaded the ambulance staff and family to leave the area with the body. The body was eventually buried at the Hosur Road Christian cemetery at 5.30 pm.

According to Mercy Angels, burials at Christian cemeteries have become increasingly problematic with the Church often not cooperating with families’ requests for burial.