The Supreme Court on Saturday asked the Chhattisgarh government to respond to a plea filed by a Christian man who claimed that he has not been allowed to bury his father’s body at a graveyard in Bastar’s Chhindawada village, PTI reported.

The man, Ramesh Baghel, has not been able to bury his father Subhash, who was a pastor, in the village graveyard after the residents objected to the burial, the news agency reported.

Subhash, a senior citizen, died on January 7 because of an illness. The body has been kept in a mortuary for 13 days now.

Baghel had moved the Chhattisgarh High Court, which rejected his plea on January 9. He then moved the Supreme Court, which asked the state government to respond to Baghel’s plea by Monday.

On Saturday, a bench of Justices BV Nagarathna and Satish Chandra Sharma said that it was surprised that the body was in a mortuary and that no action had been taken in the matter, PTI reported.

“Leave the village panchayat, even the High Court has passed a strange order,” the bench said. “What is the state government doing?”

The Supreme Court will hear the matter next on Monday.

Baghel told The Indian Express that it was his father’s last wish to be buried next to his family members.

Baghel’s grandfather had converted to Christianity more than 30 years ago. The grandfather and Baghel’s aunt were buried in the village graveyard.

“Everything was peaceful until two years ago when a group of villagers from a strong political outfit started provoking others in our village asking them to socially boycott Christians and stop them from burying bodies in the village’s graveyard for converting to the religion,” he said.

He claimed in his petition that the village residents were also not allowing him to bury the body at a plot of land owned by his family, PTI reported.

Baghel claimed that the residents had stopped at least one more Christian family from burying a person’s body in the graveyard.

“After they called for a social boycott, labourers do not work in my farm,” Baghel said. “I even had to shut my decades old general store as people stopped buying things from me. I dropped out of school to support my family, but now both my sources of income are badly affected.”

Baghel said that he reported the matter to the police.

However, the police allegedly supported the village residents. “[The police] have also threatened that if the dead body is buried as per Christian rites in their village they will take legal action against the petitioner and his family,” PTI cited the plea as claiming.

He also said that the High Court, while disposing of his plea, had noted that allowing the burial of his father in the village graveyard could create law and order problems.

The High Court, in its order, noted that the Christian community does not have a separate graveyard in the village. However, the news agency cited the court as saying that the community has a separate burial ground in Karkapal village, located 20 to 25 km away.

Lawyer and human rights activist Degree Prasad Chouhan, who is assisting Baghel, told The Indian Express that objecting to the burial of Subhash was “a clear case of discrimination on the basis of religion”.

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