Shortage of mourners forces family to bury woman twice in Baitadi

A Dalit family in Patan Municipality, Baitadi, Nepal, faced the distressing situation of burying a deceased woman twice because of a severe shortage of mourners from their community. The body of 62-year-old Lalmati Koli was found in a river after being washed away from the riverbank where she had been initially buried.

According to her nephew, Naresh Koli, the family could not perform a traditional cremation for Lalmati when she died on July 21. With only eight Koli households in the village and many young men working abroad, there were insufficient people to carry the body or prepare a funeral pyre. Consequently, basic rites were performed, and the body was buried on the riverbank.

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Only nine of us, including children, reached the cremation ground. There were not enough people to collect firewood and build the pyre, so we performed the basic funeral rites and buried the body on the riverbank. Later, the river washed it away.

The incident underscores deep-seated caste discrimination in the region. Members of other communities, such as Chhetris, Luhar, Od, and Damai, do not customarily attend funerals for the Koli community, particularly not touching the body. This practice meant the family could not gather enough mourners even for the second burial after the body was recovered.

Ward chairman Phani Bohara expressed unawareness of the death but stated he would have arranged support if informed, adding that awareness programs would be conducted to combat such discriminatory practices. A similar incident last year involved a mother's body being kept at home for two days due to a lack of local mourners for a funeral.

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Our village has a large population of Chhetris as well as Dalit communities such as the Luhar, Od and Damai. But we do not attend one another’s funerals.