The ultimate place for Hindus to be cremated is Varanasi, the ancient city where since time immemorial bodies have been burned on the banks of the river Ganges.īelbhadra, who works at one of the famous ghats there, told AFP that they were cremating at least 200 suspected coronavirus victims per day. In Ghaziabad outside New Delhi, television pictures showed bodies wrapped in shrouds lined up on biers on the pavement with weeping relatives waiting for their slot. Viral photos on social media showed electric rickshaws laden down with logs. Some crematoriums in Lucknow ran out of wood and asked people to bring it themselves. Rohit Singh, whose father died from COVID-19, said crematorium officials were charging around 7,000 rupees ($100) – almost 20 times the normal rate. ![]() One started burning bodies in an adjacent park, an official told AFP news agency. In Lucknow, the capital of the populous northern state of Uttar Pradesh, data from the largest coronavirus-only crematorium, Baikunth Dham, shows double the number of bodies arriving on six different days in April than government data on COVID-19 deaths for the entire city.Īt two crematoriums in Lucknow, relatives were given numbered tokens and made to wait for up to 12 hours. A relative leans against a glass window at the crematorium where a family member who died from the coronavirus disease is prepared for cremation, in New Delhi Bring your own wood Government spokesmen in Gujarat did not respond to requests for comment. With waiting times of up to eight hours, Rajkot has set up a dedicated 24/7 control room to manage the flow in the city’s four crematoriums. The chimney of one electric furnace in Ahmedabad cracked and collapsed after being in constant use for up to 20 hours every day for the past two weeks. Last week, Sandesh, a Gujarati newspaper, counted 63 bodies leaving a single COVID-19-only hospital for burial in the state’s largest city, Ahmedabad, on a day where government data showed 20 coronavirus deaths. “Until last month we were cremating 20-odd bodies per day… But since the beginning of April we have been handling over 80 bodies every day,” said a local official at the Ramnath Ghela Crematorium in the city. The iron frames inside another in Surat melted because there was no time to let the furnaces cool. “I have been regularly going to the crematorium since 1987, and been involved in its day-to-day functioning since 2005, but I haven’t seen so many dead bodies coming for cremation in all these years,” even during an outbreak of the bubonic plague in 1994 and floods in 2006. ![]() ![]() Prashant Kabrawala, a trustee of Narayan Trust, which manages a third city crematorium called Ashwinikumar, declined to provide the number of bodies received under the virus’ protocols but said cremations there had tripled in recent weeks. In the diamond hub of Surat, Gujarat’s second-largest city, Sailor’s Kurukshetra crematorium and a second crematorium known as Umra have cremated more than 100 bodies a day under COVID-19 protocols over the last week, far in excess of the city’s official daily coronavirus death toll of approximately 25, according to interviews with workers. This picture taken on Apshows burning funeral pyres of patients who died due to the coronavirus disease at a crematorium in Surat In the western state of Gujarat, many crematoriums in Surat, Rajkot, Jamnagar and Ahmedabad are operating around the clock with three to four times more bodies than normal. Indian social media and newspaper reports have been flooded with horrifying images of row upon row of burning pyres and crematoriums unable to cope. Officially, almost 180,000 Indians have died from coronavirus, 15,000 of them this month, although some believe the real number may be higher. ![]() Deaths rose by a record 1,761, health ministry data showed. India’s daily COVID-19 cases retreated from record levels on Tuesday but stayed above the 200,000 mark for a sixth-straight day, with cases increasing by 259,170 over the last 24 hours. Keep reading list of 4 items list 1 of 4 Is a double mutant COVID variant behind India’s record surge? list 2 of 4 India, Pakistan held secret talks on Kashmir in January: Reuters list 3 of 4 Portion of India’s historic Khuda Bakhsh library faces demolition list 4 of 4 The high cost of India’s cheap garment exports end of listĪnd with hospitals full and oxygen and medicines in short supply in an already creaky health system, several big cities are reporting far larger numbers of cremations and burials under coronavirus protocols than official COVID-19 death tolls, according to crematorium and cemetery workers, media and a review of government data.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |