As Covid fatalities drop, Delhi stops night cremations

Officials managing the crematoriums said the death count has reduced because of which mortuaries now have space, are able to keep more bodies and need not send them for night funerals

Nearly one and a half months after crematoriums across the city started holding night funerals because of the high number of daily Covid-19 deaths, Delhi’s civic agency has allowed them to stop the practice.

Family and relatives stand next to a funeral pyre of a Covid-19 victim at a crematorium in New Delhi on May 24. (File photo)

Officials managing the crematoriums said the death count has reduced because of which mortuaries now have space, are able to keep more bodies and need not send them for night funerals. In April and May, as the numbers of Covid-19 bodies grew exponentially and there was no space in mortuaries, bodies were immediately sent for funeral -- the minute a patient was declared dead at the hospital -- often leading to crowding at such places.

HT spoke to officials managing some of the largest crematoriums such as the ones in Sarai Kale Khan, Ghazipur and Shastri Park and they also confirmed that they stopped night funerals about 3-4 days ago.

Arvind Kumar, who works at the Ghazipur crematorium, said 3 bodies of suspected Covid-19 victims were brought to the crematorium on Monday. The facility is one of the largest in East Delhi. On Tuesday, it again received 3 bodies of suspected Covid-19 victims and conducted their funeral. A death audit committee of experts from the Delhi government checks medical records of each patient and confirms if the death is indeed caused by the viral disease.

“This is the same place where we had to build funeral platforms at the parking lot two months ago. We were getting over 100 bodies then. We were all working in two shifts...This decision to stop night cremations was taken about ten days ago,” said Kumar.

The officials managing the crematorium said that their head priest, Ram Karan Mishra, also left for his home town in Bihar. “He was supposed to go home but because of the high body count here, he wasn’t able to go. Last week, he left for his village. Last month, we had called many boys from our villages to help us as the body count was high. They have also left. ”

The Delhi’s government’s health bulletin also shows how cases have reduced drastically. On Monday, 36 persons died of Covid, which is the lowest since April 10, when Delhi reported 39 deaths.

At Sarai Kale and the Shastri Park crematoriums, which too had been made 24-hour facilities, officials have pasted notices that they would not take the bodies for cremation after 8pm.

Nirmal Jain, mayor East Delhi Municipal Corporation, said, “We have now shut the night cremation facility as the number of bodies coming to our crematoriums and graveyards have reduced drastically. Allowing cremation at night was an emergency move when hundreds of dead bodies were reaching our facilities.”

Jain told ANI on Tuesday morning that in east Delhi, no last rites of Covid-19 patients were held in the last two days.

In April, the national Capital recorded 5,120 deaths, followed by 8,090 deaths in May. In the first three days of May, there were more than 400 deaths every day. The Delhi government had, on April 2, said that Delhi was witnessing the fourth wave of the infection. In terms of the number of cases and deaths, the fourth wave has been the deadliest in Delhi till date.

Nigambodh Ghat, one of the largest crematoriums in the city, which has both wood-based and CNG mode of cremation, remains open round-the-clock throughout the year. Avdesh Sharma, one of the officials, who manages the crematorium in north Delhi, said, “We are open throughout the year but before the pandemic, only few would bring bodies at night. It happened only sometimes. And then last month, when we started getting 125 bodies every day, there were mass funerals at night. We get around 20-25 bodies now. And all these funerals are happening during the day.”

In the third week of April, the North Delhi’s municipal corporation’s mayor, Jai Prakash, had issued an order that all six CNG furnaces too should remain operational. Officials said they longer have to use all furnaces and use the CNG furnaces only till 8pm. The mayor had then said that while Hindu rituals do not allow cremating body at night, these were unprecedented times, which required one to accommodate the changes.