There seems to be no end to the stream of distressing pandemic visuals from Uttar Pradesh. This time, they are of a Covid victim's body being loaded onto an excavator, transported to a field, and literally dumped into a grave, along with some other disposable stuff, by the dead person's family.
The video of the incident from eastern Uttar Pradesh's Sant Kabir Nagar district, some 250 kilometres from capital Lucknow, is as depressing as several others that have been recorded in recent weeks from various parts of the state.
The unceremonious burial of the man, in his late 50s, took place in Parsa Shukl village yesterday. All his three sons, reportedly hesitant to touch the body, consented to the use of an excavator.
Visuals shot on a mobile phone show one man, reportedly one of the sons, lifting the body wrapped in a green sheet and putting it into the excavator's bucket.
Another shows three men lifting the body from the vehicle and pushing it into the grave and also dumping a lot of other leftover material with it.
"We had taken him to Gorakhpur to a private hospital. His covid report was positive. Our father asked us to take him back home and so we honoured his wishes. He died at home," one of the sons told the media.
"We are three brothers. We were unsure of what protocol to follow so we called for the JCB (excavator)," he said.
Parsa Shukl village head, Triyoganand Gautam, claimed the family was offered help for the final journey, but it refused.
"I told them we will help to transport the body to its resting place. But the sons were hesitant to touch the body, so we backed off, too. They called in the JCB. Ideally, the man should have been cremated, but the children did what they thought was ok," Mr Gautam said.
In recent weeks, several disconcerting visuals have streamed out of Uttar Pradesh. These include those of scores of bodies -- many believed to be of Covid victims -- floating in the Ganga and of hundreds of unmarked graves on the sandbanks of rivers. Only on May 28, one video emerged from Balrampur of two men dumping a Covid victim's body into a river from a bridge buzzing with vehicles.
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