The court affirmed the right to burial in accordance with religious customs, emphasizing the need for designated burial grounds for minority communities to prevent discrimination.

JUDGMENT :

NAGARATHNA, J.

Leave granted.

2. It is said that death is a great leveller. It is necessary for us to remind ourselves time and again about this solemn truth. But the instant case demonstrates that the death of a resident of a village can give rise to divisiveness thereby calling upon the Apex Court to rule on his site of burial.

3. Appellant herein is a bereaved son and an aggrieved litigant. A third generation Christian, the appellant belongs to the New Apostolic Church. His family and ancestors have been native residents of village Chhindwada, Tehsil Darbha, District Bastar, Chhattisgarh for generations and belong to the Mahra caste or community. A native resident of the same village Chhindwada, the appellant’s father, a man of faith and a pastor since 1986-87, passed away on January 7th, 2025 after suffering from prolonged illness and old age. In his living years, the appellant’s father led and participated in prayers organized in the village church and other places as well.

4. Unfortunately, the appellant’s duty as a progeny and wish to accord a decent burial to his father in his own native village was met with abrupt hurdles as his fellow villagers objected and threatened the appellant’s family against the burial of the appellant’s deceased father within the village. This objection to burial within the village confines also extended to restraining the appellant from laying to rest his father’s mortal remains in their privately owned agricultural land. It is the case of the appellant that to his utter dismay even the local police forcefully exhorted the appellant’s family to take the body out of the village. There was no help from the local Gram Panchayat also. Compelled by circumstances and on the advice of fellow relatives, the family of the appellant proceeded to take his father’s body to the mortuary of District Hospital and Medical College, Jagdalpur.

5. Aggrieved by these circumstances, the appellant, on 07.01.2025, submitted representations to the SHO, Police Station Darbha, District Bastar, Chhattisgarh and the SDO of Tokapal, District Bastar Chhattisgarh detailing his predicament and seeking police protection and from the State authorities for ensuring peaceful burial and last rites in the Christian burial area of village Chhindwada.

6. Having received no aid from the State machinery, the appellant approached the High Court of Chhattisgarh at Bilaspur in W.P.(C) No.125 of 2024 seeking a direction to the State of Chhattisgarh to allow the appellant to bury his father at the same site where his ancestors were buried in the village of Chhindwada and also sought police protection to that end.

7. It is pertinent to note that during the pendency of the writ petition, the ‘Barahpal Chindwara Gram Panchayat No. 1, 2, 3’ issued a certificate wherein it was certified that there existed no graveyard of Christian community at any place within the limits of the Gram Panchayat.

8. Thereafter, the impugned order dated 09.01.2025 came to be passed by the High Court disposing of the writ petition by refusing to grant relief as prayed for the appellant.

9. It was submitted by the appellant before the High Court, as is before this Court, that village Chhindwada has a graveyard and the Gram Panchayat has by an oral sanction permitted burial of dead bodies. Separate graveyards exist for Tribals and other communities. It was contended that there is a separate area earmarked for the burial/cremation of persons belonging to the Christian community within the graveyard of Mahra Caste or community. It was also argued that appellant’s ancestors and relatives, as detailed hereunder, have throughout the decades been buried in the area demarcated for Christians. For instance,

i. Appellant’s grandfather died in the year 2007 and was buried in the graveyard of the village meant for Christians.

ii. Two distant relatives of the appellant, namely, Sadashiv Singh and Bhagirathi, both residents of the same village were buried in the very same graveya