Currently they are burying 30-40 bodies every day as against 7 to 8 in normal days
Team Clarion
NEW DELHI – As coronavirus is claiming a large number of deaths every day across India, graveyard workers are facing tough tasks in burying such a large number of bodies which they say they have not witnessed so far.
Muhammad Shamim, supervisor of Jadid Qabristan Ahle Islam located at Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg, says that he and even his father, who was supervisor before him, has never seen so much bodies as he has buried in the last one week.
“Before COVID, we did not face any problem in this work. It was a normal job. This April the number started to double again. In fact, I would say it tripled, and we never thought in our lives there would come a time when we would have to bury 30 dead bodies every day,” Shamim was quoted by Global news outlet as saying.
Earlier, he used to bury 7-8 bodies in a normal situation but currently he is burying 30-40 bodies every day. He gets exhausted completely now and doesn’t feel any energy after burying so many bodies. He had to hire three extra gravediggers to keep up with work despite the graveyard having 14 workers.
They have allotted a particular area for the Covid related bodies which have been almost occupied. There is space left only for 100 bodies in the Covid block. Shamim said that they will have to increase that space after talking to qabristan committee members.
In normal situations, the dead body is given a bath but this is not the case with the Covid bodies. That’s why they are facing difficulties. For burying normal bodies, they charge Rs.100 per body and in covid cases, they charge 1,500. However, there is no shortage of space in the graveyard, he said.
Sher Singh, who is excavator operator at the cemetery, talked of mental trauma which he and other graveyard workers are facing these days.
“I want the pandemic to end. I don’t like doing this job because you have to witness the pain of so many people with the dead bodies of their mother or father or brother. Coronavirus should not exist,” said Singh, who hails from Nepal.
Singh started working here during lockdown. He was fearful but somebody told him that the virus does not spread through dead bodies. He said that they have seen the bodies of all kinds of people coming there. Up to 15 people come with each body. In some cases, only one or two people are accompanied with the body. Some poor people also came to them for burying bodies who had no money to give them. They buried their bodies for free.
