“We are pained for this person had to come to the Supreme Court to get his father buried”

scales of justice

On January 9, 2025, an order was passed by a single judge bench of Justice Bibhu Datta Guru of Chhattisgarh High Court denying the prayer of petitioner Ramesh Baghel that his father’s body should be allowed to be buried in the village where his family resides for generations and that police protection should be provided to for the last rites of his father.

On the morning of January 7, 2025, Subhash Baghel died due to prolonged illness and old age. His family has resided in Chhindwada village of Bastar District since time immemorial. They belong to the Scheduled Caste, whose population was around 750 in 2000-2500 of the total village population. The rest of the people belong to tribal communities.

On the same day when the family wanted to bury his mortal remains in the area orally specified for Christian persons in the village graveyard some villagers aggressively objected to this and they threatened the family with dire consequences if the family buried the body in the land. They also did not allow the burial of the dead body in the private land of the deceased family. Consequently, the family had to call the police, but their hope that the police would help them bury the body proved wrong rather, the police exerted pressure on the family to take the body out of the village. The family further alleges that police also threatened the family with legal action against them if they buried the body as per Christian rites in the village.

A family had to face this because the deceased Subhash Baghel was a Christian Pastor and his family has been practising Christianity for almost three 3 generations. But this is the first time they have faced this kind of protest from the villagers. Before this some family members had been buried in the same village and no one objected to the same.

Left with no other option Ramesh had to file a writ petition in the high court of Chhattisgarh. But his hope of dignified last rites of his father’s body shattered when the High Court rejected his plea observing that-

“Admittedly, there is no separate burial ground/graveyard for the followers of Christian community is available in village Chhindawada, however, as per submission of learned Dy. Adv. General and learned counsel for the intervener, separate burial ground/grave yard for the followers of Christian religion is available in village Karkapal, which is situated at a distance of 20-25 kms. from village Chhindawada.” (Para 8 of the judgment)

“… Considering the fact that burial ground/graveyard of Christian community is available in nearby area, it will not be proper to grant relief as sought for by petitioner in this writ petition, which may cause unrest and disharmony in the public at large” (Para 9 of the judgment).

On the request of the family that the body should be allowed to bury in the private land of the family the court answered this negatively relying on Mathew vs. State of Kerala, where Kerala High Court had held that no other land can be used as burial ground other than the earmarked area for the same purpose.

Aggrieved by this order Ramesh decided to challenge it before the Supreme Court. On the first hearing before the bench led by Justice B V Nagarathna, the court came down heavily on the state and said that-

 “Mr. Solicitor, we are very sorry a man has to come to the Supreme Court to have his father buried. We are sorry to say, neither the Panchayat nor the State Government and either the High Court has been able to resolve this problem. And the High Court taking shelter and saying there would be law and order problem. We are pained by that. If the High Court and the State cannot resolve such a matter..We are pained for this person had to come to the Supreme Court to get his father buried.”

SG Tushar Mehta argued that the village burial ground is only for “Hindu Tribals“(emphasis added) and this issue should not be decided on “emotions” as the intention is to make this a precedent to be followed throughout India. He further argued that this is an “Article 25 matter” and would be subjected to public order. In reply to this Bench questioned, “Why for so long, no objection was raised against those Christian tribals that have been buried?”

Historically Tribals are not Hindu and this finds backing even in the statutes and legal jurisprudence. Further, it is pertinent to mention here that till now no scheduled caste family has ever faced protest from the Adivasi community even in the villages where no specific area has been designated for the Hindu population and they are performing the last rites in the same land. Historically Scheduled castes are considered a part of the Hindu religion, and even constitutional provisions support this contention. This incorrect stand of including scheduled castes as Hindus has been strongly opposed by various Dalit organizations.

This case is an Exception

This is not the first incident of this kind happening in the Bastar region of Chhattisgarh. In the last 3-4 years it has become a regular incident, though only a few were able to reach the court, majorly due to the inaccessibility of the High Court for the local villagers which is almost around 500 Km from Bastar.

There have been various instances where family members were stopped from performing last rites, beaten by the villages, the family was compelled to travel 100 km for the burial of the body, tearing down houses belonging to the ‘church-going community’ (as villagers call it), churches and pastors being physically attacked. In one of the incidents, the villagers upon getting information that an old Christian woman had been buried in the field by the family, the villagers dug up the grave and returned the dead body to the family to bury it somewhere else. It has been seen that the administration and police have always taken the side of the villagers opposing the burial except in the cases where they had to reluctantly follow the court directions ordering them to help the family to get the dead body of their family members buried in their birthplace and to maintain the public order in the area.

Last year in 2024 two more cases that invited the media attention were Ramlal Kashyap v State of Chhattisgarh and Sartik Korram v State of Chhattisgarh. Both the cases were from the same Bastar region and the facts of the cases were also identical to the present case. The present case is a repetition of the above-mentioned cases just with a different name. But the only factor of this case that does not match with earlier cases is that, in previous cases, it was allowed by the High Court to bury the body in the village. In Ramlal Kashyap the same High Court went to the extent to say that “…It is already a well-settled principle of law that Article 21 of The Constitution of India includes the right of a person to have a decent burial. Right to life implies a meaningful life with human dignity, not just an animal life and this right also extends to a person who is dead. This right exists until the death of a person which covers the right to a decent life up to death, including a decent death procedure.” and also ordered the Superintendent of Police of the concerned district to provide protection for the decent burial of the body.

The Supreme Court has emphasized in numerous cases that the right to dignity and fair treatment under Article 21 of the constitution of India is not only available to a living man but also to his body after death. Therefore dignified burial of the body is a fundamental right that cannot be denied to any person on the basis of which religion they are practising.

In the present case, the Chhattisgarh High Court not only turned its face from its own judgment but also failed to safeguard the fundamental right of a citizen to a decent dignified burial. A community member says “The irony is that whenever district administration is requested to designate an area for the Christians, they orally reply that they do not have land for the same, but never give it in writing.”

Larger Picture

These incidents are not happening in isolation. Almost in every village of the Bastar region particularly in the districts of Kanker, Narayanpur, and Kondagaon ‘Church-going families’ are facing various kinds of brutality. It further intensified after the December 2022 incident where over 450 church-going people from around 16 villages of the Narayanpur district, a large number of whom were women and children who were subjected to violence by the villagers, and several churches were attacked. These families were left with two options either to stop going to churches and follow and participate in traditional customs or leave the village.

A fact-finding report of Chhattisgarh Bachao Andolan (a joint forum of various progressive organizations working in the state) states that

“Most of these displaced people had been regularly going to church for the past 5‐8 years, but tensions have erupted only over the past few months following the formation of the BJP‐RSS backed Janjaati Suraksha Manch, which has been demanding the de‐reservation of ‘converted Adivasis’. In spite of the overwhelming understanding that this violence was instigated at the behest of the BJP/ RSS, almost everyone we spoke with affirmed that the village meetings where decisions were taken to oust the churchgoers were only attended by villagers from the village itself, and it was these villagers who were carrying out the beatings and breaking of homes and churches.”


Therefore, it is essential to view the current event as a part of the broader issue occurring in this region. The appeal pending before the Supreme Court against the order of the Chhattisgarh High Court Judgement has been reserved by the bench led by Justice BV Nagarathna. Till then the wait of Ramesh and thousands of other Christian families for decent and dignified burial continues.

Geet Kumar Dahariya is an advocate

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