Fearing COVID-19, Jharkhand villagers refuse to conduct final rites of 3-yr-old

Out of the fear of COVID-19, villagers in Jharkhand's Latehar refused to conduct the final rites of a three-year-old who had died after suffering from fever. When the deceased's test results came back negative, the local BDO with the village chief performed the final rites.

Latehar (Jharkhand):In an extremely unfortunate incident, villagers in Jharkhand's Latehar district on Wednesday refused to conduct the final rites of a deceased three-year-old due to the fear of contracting COVID-19.

According to reports, a migrant worker had come back to her village Kadima around a week back from Tripura. The woman's husband, who is working at some other location is still stranded there and could not come back.

The woman's three-year-old kid, who was reportedly suffering from fever and cough, passed away yesterday, following which she requested villagers to conduct the final rites as there was no male member in her family.

However, since the child had a fever, the villagers suspected that he had died due to COVID-19 and refused to go near his body.

"The family had come from outside. We were scared of contracting coronavirus. How could we have picked up the body," asked Nand Dev Yadav, a resident of the village.

Upon receiving information about the incident, Latehar block development officer (BDO) Ganesh Rajak reached the woman's house. The officer called a team from the COVID-19 care centre and got the kid's samples collected for a COVID-19 test.

Later in the evening, the test results came back negative, following which the BDO with the help of village chief Sanjay Oraon conducted the final rites of the deceased child.

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