Another dead buried in his home in Agra village

AGRA: On his death bed, Aziz Khan, 53, who was terminally ill with Cancer, had just one last wish in mind-- to get a decent burial in a graveyard, unlike his predecessors and relatives who were buried in their homes and “haunting” the living ones. He had some hope as ‘gram sabha’ in Agra’s Chah Pokhar village recently offered a patch of barren land to Muslims to bury their dead after years of struggle.
He died on Wednesday morning.But, when men of his family took his body to the land, scores of villagers gathered there and threatened them to take it away. Khan’s body was then dispatched back home, where he was buried along with others. Talking to TOI, the deceased’s cousin Sardar Khan said, “Some government officials, including policemen, also asked us to take the body away. Instead of resolving the issue, we were pressurized to go back and bury the body in the house only.”

If buried there, Khan would have been the first person to get a place in the graveyard which his community wanted for decades.

So far, Muslims of Chah Pokhar were burying their dead in their homes, a frightening sight for a fresh set of eyes.
Some lay buried in kitchen while others in courtyard. Children grew up playing on the graves after eating breakfast cooked beside another set of grave in kitchen. For long, the Muslims in the village have been demanding a land for graveyard. TOI published a report on June 20, highlighting their plight.
Days after the TOI report, the ‘gram sabha’ offered the land for a graveyard. But, a section of the villagers was opposed to village head Sundar Singh’s decision to donate the 1,500 sqmt plot. On July 11, a “temple” suddenly came up on the plot. Then, on Tuesday, another idol surfaced on the land. Later in the evening, sub divisional magistrate (SDM) Jyoti Rai visited the village and took away both the idols.
When contacted, district magistrate Ravi Kumar NG said that the administration is working to resolve the issue. The village has over 250 Muslims. Most of them are poor and landless, and men scout for work as contract labourers.