When Venkateshwarlu and Eshwaramma lost their teenage son to dengue at the government-run Niloufer Hospital in Hyderabad on Wednesday, they thought things couldn’t possibly get any worse.
They were wrong.
The duo brought the boy’s body to their rented residence at Venkateshwara Nagar Colony in Kukatpally hours later, only to find the landlord – Jagadish Gupta – blocking the entrance. The reason? Gupta had married his daughter off only three months ago, and it was considered inauspicious to allow a corpse into the house for at least a year afterwards.
So Venkateshwarlu and Eshwaramma ended up spending the night with the body of 13-year-old Suresh – once a happy-go-lucky Class VI student – outside the house compound, even as the skies unleashed a veritable thunderstorm on them. The hapless couple pleaded with Gupta in the rain, asking him to at least allow the body into the compound, but he remained unmoved.
Some of their neighbours took pity on the couple, and covered them with a tarpaulin. A few youngsters in the area even arranged for a freezer to keep the body in.
{{/usCountry}}Some of their neighbours took pity on the couple, and covered them with a tarpaulin. A few youngsters in the area even arranged for a freezer to keep the body in.
{{/usCountry}}It was only in the morning, after the rain had stopped, that the residents of the colony began protesting outside Gupta’s house. The family finally took the boy’s body to the cemetery and performed the last rites around 8 am. No police case was filed against the landlord.
However, Andhra Pradesh Child Rights Association president P Achyuta Rao said they were planning to file a petition before the State Human Rights Commission. “Though inhuman, such instances are not uncommon. There is a need for legal intervention to help bereaved families in such situations,” he said.