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4 Uttarakhand SDRF trek 5 hours to cremate Covid+ive man’s body, his son refused
Uttarakhand police chief Ashok Kumar said they had launched ‘Operation Hausla’ under which bodies of abandoned bodies of Covid-19 people are also cremated.
Four personnel of Uttarakhand’s state disaster response force (SDRF) of police trekked 5 km for the cremation of a 90-year-old Covid-19-infected man in Pithoragarh district on Wednesday after his family and villagers abandoned the body.
The SDRF personnel came to the village from their base camp in Pithoragarh city after receiving a call for help from the dead man’s son on Tuesday night.
“The deceased, Mohan Ram, was bed-ridden. He died on Tuesday after which his family undertook his Covid-19 test in which he tested positive. They then abandoned the body as other villagers were refusing to lend a hand in getting him cremated. His son Bheem Bahadur then contacted us on Tuesday at 10.30 pm,” sub-inspector Manohar Kanyal, who led the team of four, said.
Kanyal promised to come the following day.
“Next morning, we four left our camp at 6.30 am and reached the house at 11.30 am. There, none of his family members or the villagers came forward to help us in getting the body packed or arranging wood at the cremation ground. We did it all by ourselves,” he said.
The SDRF officer said after putting the body on a PPE kit, they carried him 1km down towards a motorable road.
“From there, we carried it in a hearse till the closest motorable spot to the crematorium ground. We had to carry the body in bamboo on foot, braving the difficult hilly terrain to a cremation ground that was downhill near a river. There, too, we have to arrange the wood on our own to set the pyre to cremate the body,” he said.
Kanyal said he and his colleagues don’t “run away from such hard work because it’s the service of humanity in these difficult times”. But it is very upsetting, he said, when well-off people like the family of this man refuse to carry the cremation of their dear ones. “If the family is not financially sound, then we can understand their problem, but at least those who can afford on their own, should not do this,” he said.
Six days ago, in another incident, an SDRF team had helped an 82-year-old Covid-19 infected man get admitted to a hospital by carrying him on a stretcher for about 7 km on hilly terrain.
As the man used to live alone in the village, nobody came to help him in taking him to a nearby hospital. The SDRF men, after receiving an SOS call, reached there and got him admitted to a Covid-19 hospital.
Director general of state police Ashok Kumar said, “The department has been helping the needy ones in this pandemic by providing help like providing oxygen cylinders, arranging ambulances and getting hospital beds for patients.”
“We have been doing this all under an initiative known as ‘Operation Hausla’ under which we also cremate abandoned bodies of Covid-19 infected people. We would continue to serve humanity,” said Kumar.
In the second wave of the pandemic, police have cremated 792 bodies of Covid-19 infected people till May 31. They also arranged ambulances for 600 people, provided oxygen cylinders to 2,726 people, medicine for 17,609 people and hospital beds for 792 people.
