Christian burial dispute: Rowdies vandalize Church, create ruckus

The family members put forward the demand before the administration that strict action should be taken against those who dug up the buried body

Kanker (Team Newsbuddy): The dispute that started in Jamgaon Gram Panchayat under Narharpur for the last two days regarding the burial of the dead body of a converted family has now increased to such an extent that some people vandalized the church building and dug up the buried body on Sunday.

Now a new twist has come in this whole matter that the administration is saying that the dead body of the deceased has been dug up for postmortem, whereas the deceased was unwell for the last few months, he was sometimes admitted to Raipur and sometimes to Kanker hospital, who died in the hospital and was sent to the village in a hearse.

However, due to political pressure and being a part of the crowd, the administration has not been able to reach the right decision.

On the other hand, the family members say that on the day the body was buried on their private land, if the administration and villagers had to provide a place for burial, then we would have buried the body there. There is no cemetery in Narharpur area, due to which we had to bury the body on our private land.

According to the information received from the family, Somlal Rathore, a resident of Jamgaon, died on Saturday due to prolonged illness, after which his family buried the body on Sunday on their private leased land, after which some outsiders along with some people of the village dug out the buried body and brought it to Narharpur hospital, in this too the administration remained a mute spectator and kept all this incident.

Long meeting between SDM and family members
On Monday morning itself, a dispute started in Jamgaon by some people regarding the body of the deceased, after which a long meeting was held between Kanker SDM and the family members. After coming out of the meeting, the family members said that the administration was pressurizing us and asking us to dig up the body and take it to another place, but we have buried the body in our leased private land and we will not dig it out, after which the family members left from there and appealed to the administration and also submitted an application, but the dispute that started in the morning reached to vandalism and digging up the body by afternoon.
The matter is of Jamgaon under Narharpur police station, where the atmosphere remained heated till late night, while the family members and the people of the Christian community kept getting troubled in the struggle for the graveyard.

Dead Rathore’s body taken out for postmortem:Administration

Somlal Rathore (40 years old), resident of Jamgaon village, Indira Awaspara of Narharpur development block of the district, died on the night of 26 July, after which the deceased’s body was cremated the next day on 27 July. The deceased’s brother Bhuneshwar Rathore expressed apprehension over his death and expressed suspicion of his brother’s murder and demanded the Sub-Divisional Magistrate Kanker to investigate the matter.

Taking cognizance of the seriousness of the said matter, the buried body of deceased Somlal Rathore was taken out in the presence of Sub-Divisional Magistrate (Revenue) Kanker amid police protection for proper postmortem. As per the demand of the deceased’s brother, the body was removed and a proper Panchnama was done and the postmortem is being done by a team of doctors. During this, the police department team was present in view of law and order.