Sundargarh: Unable to bear the expenses demanded by villagers to help in performing last rites, a woman and her eight-year-old son, on Thursday had to wait for hours together before cremating the body of her husband in Ganua under Koida block.
After the death of one Phagu Pethei, his wife Asha and son requested the fellow villagers to help them in cremation. However, the local residents rejected the plea for the reason that the bereaved family was ostracised in the village. So they asked the mother-son duo to pay Rs 10,000 fine if they wanted their help in performing last rites.
As the woman expressed her inability to pay the fine, the villagers did not lend a hand.
According to sources, the family was boycotted by the villagers over some reason and her two others sons had left the village to work as migrant labourers somewhere outside.
Later with the help of a social activist the woman took her husband’s body in a vehicle to a nearby forest and buried after a JCB machine helped them bury.