For 10 months, for hours on end, he sat next to her grave. He thought she might want water, so he dug a pipeline into where she lay. He didn’t want her to be wet, so as neighbours and relatives watched aghast, he held up white rice bags over the grave when it rained. It didn’t matter that his 65-year-old mother died in February. To anyone that asked, or tried to stop him, he had one unbreakable, unchangeable justification. She was his mother.
There were times in these 10 months that he tried bringing her back from under the earth and began digging her grave. Each time, locals stepped in, preventing him from doing so. Until early on December 24, when he did.
Later that morning, people walking in the street in Kunnam village in Tamil Nadu’s Perambalur district found a strong, foul smell coming out of the 38-year-old’s one-bedroom home. They made a call to the Tamil Nadu Police Control room to complain. “By the time we reached the spot, the neighbours had gotten him out of the house but no one knew why there was a smell,” said the investigating officer, who didn’t wish to be named.
When the team entered the house, they found that he had locked his mother’s body inside the one room, covered her using old sarees, and old banners. They removed the clothes gingerly, to find a pile of bones, the skin on them rotting away, almost non-existent. Even then, he protested. “He didn’t let us take her away and he kept wailing that she was his mother. We consoled him and only after his relatives brought him out of the house, could take her body out,” the officer said.
Investigations since have revealed that the 65-year-old woman died in February this year of age-related complications -- 16 years after the death of her husband. For all that time, his mother was his only caretaker, and for the past decade, the 38-year-old was on medication for mental illness.
{{/usCountry}}Investigations since have revealed that the 65-year-old woman died in February this year of age-related complications -- 16 years after the death of her husband. For all that time, his mother was his only caretaker, and for the past decade, the 38-year-old was on medication for mental illness.
{{/usCountry}}The man has never been employed, and since his mother’s death, his sisters and their daughters, who live close by, have been giving him three meals a day, police officials said. Before her death, the mother worked as a farm labourer to provide for the two.
After recovering the body from the house, police officials on Sunday cremated her in a different cemetery in Perambalur after a post-mortem examination.
“We didn’t want to take her to the same place to burn her because he would continue going back. Even when we brought him to the station for an enquiry, he asked us where his mother is because he saw us taking her away,” the officer said.
Ramesh Karuppaiya, a social activist in Perambalur, said that reports of the incident were being widely circulated on social media and might add to the “stigma” that the man is facing. “The only bond that this man had was with his mother and he completely lacked any social support. There isn’t a great deal of awareness of mental health problems, and no avenues for help. I fear he will be further stigmatised. The police should ensure that he gets continuous counselling and neuropsychiatric doctors are involved so that he is not marginalised further,” Karuppaiya said.
A case under Section 174 (police to enquire and report on suicide) of the Code of Criminal Procedure has been filed, officials said. They, however, insisted that they would find mental health support for him. “We are planning to file a petition in court to allow us to send him to Chennai’s Institute of Mental Health,” a senior police official in the district said on condition of anonymity.
Meanwhile, the grieving man is back home.