The Supreme Court on Monday said it was pained that the Chhattisgarh government and High Court had not been able to resolve the complaint of a Christian man who claimed he was not allowed to bury his father’s body at a graveyard in Bastar’s Chhindawada village, reported Bar and Bench.

The man, Ramesh Baghel, has not been able to bury his father Subhash, who was a pastor, in the village graveyard after objections from residents, PTI reported on Saturday.

Subhash, a senior citizen, died on January 7 due to illness. The body has been kept in a mortuary for 13 days.

Baghel moved the Supreme Court after the Chhattisgarh High Court rejected his plea on January 9. The Supreme Court on Saturday asked the Chhattisgarh government to respond to Baghel’s plea by Monday.

“Why cannot a person be buried where they wanted to?” the bench of Justices BV Nagarathna and Satish Chandra Sharma asked on Monday.

“We are sorry to say that a person has to come to Supreme Court for the burial of his father,” the bench added. “The High Court, panchayat, etc. are not able to solve the problem. The High Court says there will be law and order problem…We are pained at this.”

The court posted the matter for hearing next on January 22.

On Saturday, the top court had said it was surprised that Baghel’s fathers body was kept 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?”

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 over 30 years ago. The grandfather and Baghel’s aunt are 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 [as reprisal] 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 other Christian family from burying a relative 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.”

“[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 Baghel’s plea as claiming.

Baghel 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 but 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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