Man seen carrying wife’s dead body through streets in India to be buried

The locals did not come forward to help the man as they suspected that his wife died after contracting coronavirus infection

In heart-wrenching scenes an Indian man was forced to carry his wife’s body on his shoulder for a three-and-a-half kilometres walk to the crematorium after vehicles shunned his request for help on the suspicion she died from Covid-19.

The man, Swamy, was captured on CCTV footage carrying his wife’s body as he walked the streets of Kamareddy, a town in the southern state of Telangana on Sunday.

According to the local media reports, the couple used to beg for a living and lived at a local railway station.

Swamy’s wife, Nagalaxmi, had not been feeling well for some time and collapsed at the station on Sunday, reported The Times of India.

While the local police pooled over Rs 2500 (£24) for him to carry out the last rites, no one came forward to help him take his wife’s body to the burial ground, forcing him to cover the distance on foot.

This is not an isolated incident as the country is ravaged by the second wave of the pandemic.

In the most populous state of Uttar Pradesh, an elderly man was forced to carry the body of his deceased wife on a bicycle in search of a place for cremation.

Tilakdhari Singh, a resident of Jaunpur district, was denied a place to cremate his wife, Rajkumari, as locals suspected she had died of Covid-19. He was forced to carry his wife’s body on a bicycle and ride for hours looking for a place to cremate her, reported India Today.

India has been devastated by the second wave of the coronavirus, with hospitals falling short of critical medical supplies including oxygen and drugs, while pyres in the crematorium continue to burn round the clock.

On Thursday India marked another grim record high of over 379,000 new infections and 3,654 deaths, taking the total number of recorded infections past 18 million.