At Noida crematorium, ashes pile up
Over 350 urns containing funeral ashes of those who died in April are yet to be picked up from the Sector 94A cremation ground. The crematorium has only 163 lockers to keep the urns, the remaining ones have been kept outside with the tags mentioning the details of the dead.
The ashes, usually of a Hindu, are immersed in a river as part of funeral rituals by the dead person’s family.
Brahma Prakash, the manager of the sector 94A Antim Niwas crematorium, which is owned by Noida Authority and run by Noida Lok Manch (NLM) – an NGO, said,
“Between January and March this year, we used to cremate around 10-15 bodies per day, but now it is around 90 in a day. Some of the bodies come without living family members due to the pandemic. If no one appears 20-25 days after the cremation, we send the unclaimed urns to Haridwar in a van for its immersion in the Ganga. As per the Hindu mythology, a soul gets salvation only after immersion of ashes.”
Mahesh Saxena, the general secretary of NLM, said that the 13-acre cremation ground has two CNG powered crematoria that can cremate a body in 40 minutes, faster than firewood that can take as long as four hours. “We have around 163 lockers in Antim Niwas, where the ashes are kept. But due to unprecedented circumstances people are not able to immerse them. As a result, now more than one urn is kept in a single locker. In some lockers, there are now five urns. However, the ashes carry names of the dead with serial number so that they are not mixed up,” he said.
Saxena also said that the family members can get the ashes an hour after cremation in CNG chamber, while they have to wait for 24 hours in case of firewood cremation. “The Noida Authority has informed us today that the third CNG powered crematoria will start functioning from Wednesday. Noida being a satellite town, many families from neighbouring areas, including Delhi and Ghaziabad, often come here for last rites,” he said.
A cremation staff said that the number of dead bodies has increased many times. “In April so far, over 900 bodies have been cremated here. On Monday, the number of dead bodies reached here was more than 50 and all of them were Covid-19 victims. Since relatives of many deceased have not turned up to collect their ashes in last 15 days, we had no option than to clean the area, for making pyres of other bodies. However, we’ve stored the last remains of the deceased in different urns, mentioning their names and serial numbers on it,” he said, preferring anonymity.