Mohali man to perform last rites of mother

Sandeep Rana

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, August 29 

As destiny would have it, one son will again immerse ashes, this time of his mother, and another would apologise for not performing the last rites of his beloved mother in Kiratpur. 

A Mohali-based man, who immersed the ashes of somebody else’s mother due to “mismanagement” at the Sector 25 cremation ground, said his family would now immerse the actual ashes of his mother. 

Whereas Ravi Verma, Kaimbwala resident, along with his family, will accompany them to the immersion place in Kiratpur to apologise to his mother that he could not perform her last rites. 

The heart-broken Ravi was yesterday told by the cremation ground staff that his allotted token number 9, where the ashes were kept, had been exchanged with token number 6 belonging to the Mohali family. When he spoke to that family, Ravi was told they had already immersed the ashes. 

“We have been getting calls for the past 2-3 days, but were not in a position to answer those. However, one hour before the ‘rasam pagdi’ ceremony, we picked the call from Ravi about the issue. By then, we had already immersed the ashes. Left with no option, we performed the ‘rasam pagdi’ too. It all happened due to foolishness of the staff there,” rued the man, who had to immerse the ashes of Ravi’s mom.

“The system is so bad there that they ask for money for everything by taking the advantage of people’s state of mind at that time. They first asked for money for cow, then for tree and on top of it, they asked us to pay for food for 10 pandits for 10 days. In total, we spent about Rs 10,000,” said the daughter-in-law of the deceased.

The family further alleged though the management was taking Rs 100 for keeping the ashes, the lockers were in a shambles. 

“They were rugged and leaking. There was no difference between token number 9 and 6. The locker managing staff were also drunk,” they alleged.

Locker keys with police

• Purohit Gulshan Sharma, incharge of the cremation ground, said, “Keys of locker number 6 and 9 are with the police as an FIR has been registered. The police will hand it over to us only when the matter is clear from there end.” 
• Sharma, who is the third generation incharge, denied all allegations and said, “We work from 6 am to 10 pm. One cremation takes four hours. We are doing seva, but fed up with accusations and abuses. Our next generation does not want to this job now and even we do not feel the need to work here.”