On way to perform 'sati', woman dragged from pyre

A woman, who wanted to perform 'sati', was dragged from her husband's pyre minutes before it was to be lit in Uttar Pradesh's Mainpuri district, about 300 kilometre from Lucknow.

According to police sources in Lucknow, the woman, identified as 75-year old Laungshree Devi, was sitting in the middle of the pyre of her husband and the kin were about to lit the same, when a local police team reached there and dragged her out.

Sources said that 80-year-old Gore Lal Shakya, the husband of Laungshree Devi, and a resident of Angautha village in the district, had died after a protracted illness on Sunday night.

His cremation was to be held on Monday.

Laungshree insisted that she wanted to be a 'sati' and would sit on the pyre.

''I had promised my husband 30 years back that I would also die with him,'' she said after being rescued.

Incidentally, none of the villagers, not even her own sons, made any attempt to prevent her from doing so.

Some women, on the other hand, applied 'tilak' (red mark) on her forehead before she sat on the pyre.

''My mother is a religious woman... We tried to dissuade her but she remained adamant,'' Laungshree's eldest son Vijay Bahadur said.

Sources said one of the locals, however, informed the police, who reached the spot within no time and rescued the woman.

A probe has been ordered into the incident.

''We are trying to ascertain if she was coaxed into sitting on the pyre... The guilty will be punished,'' a senior official said in Mainpuri on Tuesday.