Broke, man gives wife home burial

In a heart-rending incident, an old man in a Madhya Pradesh village was forced to bury the body of his deceased wife in his courtyard owing to lack of money to perform her last rites, the police said on Thursday.

Acting on tip-off, the police raided the house of Narayan Tiwari (72) in the village of Fatehpur in Shadol district and exhumed the body of his wife Kunti Bai (68), who died in July this year.

“We were shocked to learn from the old man that he was too poor to afford the expenses for arranging funeral rites of his deceased wife. Hence, he decided not to alert the villagers about his wife’s death and quietly buried the body in the courtyard. It was raining heavily that day,” in-charge of the Singhpur police station Uma Shankar Yadav said.

The police said the childless couple had to beg to make ends meet. The old woman had not been keeping well for long. And she died of prolonged illness.

The couple owned a small plot of land in the village. “In the last week of July, Kunti went missing. Villagers got curious when she was not seen for a long time. However, Narayan used to avoid them by saying that she had gone to meet some relatives whenever they inquired about her. Finally, the villagers got suspicious and informed the police,” the police said. “The old man is an introvert. He was reluctant to seek villagers’ help,” said police.