Body of lower caste woman taken off funeral pyre after upper castes object in UP village

LUCKNOW: The body of a 26-year-old lower-caste Dalit woman was taken off a funeral pyre in Uttar Pradesh's Etawah district by a group of upper-caste men who said she could not be cremated on communal land, police said on Tuesday.

The funeral was being held in Kakarpura village last week when just as her four-year-old son was about to light the pyre, about 200 men stopped the cremation going ahead, saying the site was not meant for lower-caste villagers.

"My family and I... begged them to let us perform the last rites but no one listened to us. The police were also called but nothing was done," said Rahul Bajaniya, the woman's husband.

"We had to take the body to a different cremation ground, which is about four kilometres (2.5 miles) away, and perform the last rites there," he was quoted as saying in a news report.

Bajaniya said caste discrimination in the village was so entrenched that people from higher castes "even object to us when we fetch water from the (community) hand-pump".

No FIR has been registered in the case so far. The circle officer said no FIR has been registered as the family of the woman has not filed any complaint against the Thakur men. Circle officer BS Veer Kumar also said the matter was resolved "peacefully".

An online video showing men removing firewood from the pyre as a body lay on the ground had been viewed nearly 200,000 times by Tuesday.

The incident sparked anger on social media, with politicians and campaigners demanding justice for the woman's family.

BSP president Mayawati on Tuesday demanded an inquiry into the incident. In a tweet, she said: "In UP near Agra, the body of a Dalit woman was removed from the funeral pyre by people of upper classes having casteist mentality because the cremation ghat belonged to upper castes which is most shameful and most condemnable."

In a related tweet, she said: "In this casteist and most disgusting incident, a high-level inquiry should be done by the UP government and the culprits should be given harshest punishment so that such an incident is not repeated in the state, this is the demand of the BSP." With agency reports