Covid-19 in India: Good Samaritan gives dignified farewell to discarded victims

New Delhi - The selfless act of Jitender Singh, alias Shunty, has struck a big chord with Delhi residents, who are living on the edge due to the pandemic.

Death is alive and the only constant that’s stalking the panic and grief-stricken hapless Indians.

But who will give a dignified farewell to the Covid-19 victims, whose lives are being snuffed out like fireflies, as the Narendra Modi-ruled Indian government appeared to have dropped the ball on contagion management and a bereaved nation mourns for the departed?

Jitender Singh, alias Shunty, 60, has emerged as the messiah for the victims -- many of whose relatives have either run away in fear of contracting SARS-COV-2, which causes the viral disease, or the bodies were unidentified. He has been upholding the values of (service) that his faith Sikhism puts a premium on and his selfless act is a paean to humanism amid these unprecedented hard times.

Singh, a resident of Vivek Vihar in eastern fringes of Delhi, India’s national capital, took to arranging the last rites of the discarded bodies following a life-altering incident that had occurred over 25 years ago.

He vividly remembers that he had gone to the Nigambodh Ghat, a crematorium on the banks of Yamuna river in Delhi, for the last rites of one of his kin.

At the crematorium, he came across a man foraging for logs in a funeral pyre, whose embers were yet to be extinguished.

A curious Singh asked the man why he was foraging for logs when the cremation was yet to be over.

The man said he and his wife -- Singh recalled that the couple was from neighbouring Uttar Pradesh (UP), India’s most populous state -- did not have the financial resources to cremate their child, which those days would cost a princely sum of around Dh200.

Singh, who was a car dealer back in the day, was shaken out of his complacent stupor after he heard the couple’s ordeal.

Soon, he and his friends pulled in money to cremate the child.

Later, that evening, while interacting with his friends, Singh had an epiphany.

“Why do some people indulge in spending millions in big fat weddings and other luxury materialistic goods, while many don’t even have the financial resources to give half a decent farewell to their loved ones?” he told on Monday afternoon while supervising the disposal of two Covid-19 victims' bodies to a crematorium in Delhi.

An emotional Singh made giving respectable last rites to the impoverished dead his calling in life, irrespective of caste, creed, and religion, and that has been his (passion) since that life-altering incident.

The thought made him start the Shahid Bhagat Singh Sewa Dal, a voluntary and charitable organisation, in the Delhi-National Capital Region (NCR).

Over the years, the organisation has grown and now has eight drivers for a fleet of 18 vehicles, including hearse carriages and ambulances, and a 22-member team.

joydeep@khaleejtimes.com