E-Paper
Kin put woman on fire alive!
When Padmavathi, a widow suffering from cancer, had been discharged from Vizag?s hospital, her relatives drove her to the cremation ground, reports Ashok Das.
When 75-year-old Seera Padmavathi of Gajuwaka, near Visakhapatnam, opened her eyes after being placed on the pyre on Friday her family did not rejoice. They fled.
Padmavathi, a widow suffering from cancer, had been discharged from Vizag’s King George Hospital. But instead of taking her home, her relatives gave her sedatives and drove to the cremation ground.
They were going ahead with the funeral when Padmavathi stirred, and the cremation ground staff took her down from the pyre.
“Sub-inspector Sheikh Hussain asked the relatives to take her back to the hospital. She was later discharged and is now staying with her son Srinivas,” Vizag city Police Commissioner V .S.K. Kaumudi said.
A senior police official said such cases were hardly reported because relatives entered into pacts over division of property and bought the silence of witnesses.
A similar case was reported in November in Chitoor, in which 76-year-old Parvathamma was brought to a burial ground by her eldest son and left to die.
