The Man Who Buried Bodies For Free During India's Lockdown as Graveyard Workers Were Over-Whelmed

Sitting comfortably behind his shop counter Sajaad Ahmad Khan, 38, hands over a bill to a customer as he waves them goodbye.

By Muhktur Zahoor

in Kashmir, India

He’s owned the Houseful department store for a decade now and it‘s well-known in the community for providing key essentials to locals.

Bread, toiletries, beverages and even masks can be found in the small shop situated in Jammu and Kashmir, India.

And when the country's Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, declared a national lockdown in March 2020 due to the spread of the deadly Covid-19 virus, Sajaad’s shop was among the 23 in the region providing home deliveries.

It remained - as expected - a life line for many families that would have other wise gone without.

India went into a complete lockdown on March 24 - much earlier than other countries and at that time it had confirmed 519 cases and nine deaths from the virus.

The 68-day shutdown proved devastating for Kashmir residents with some losing their jobs and the ability to make ends meet.

The strict measures and their consequences for residents meant Sajaad's days were spent trekking long routes to serve the dozens of families in need.

But despite the several lockdowns throughout the pandemic the virus did not slow down.

Hospitals soon ran out of beds, oxygen and medicine between April and May 2021 and hundreds of dead bodies were left out in the open because crematoriums and cemeteries were full.

Getting a clear picture of the total number of infections in the country since India recorded its first case proved difficult because of poor record-keeping and a lack of widespread testing. But local media reports claim the figures could be double even triple the official count.

As the pandemic reached its second peak in May 2021, dead bodies were seen floating in the Ganges in the northern Indian states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

Month on month, bodies of both young and old continued to pile on, with families even afraid to carry out traditional burial rituals on their loved ones, as people had believed the conspiracy theory that one could catch the virus just by touching a dead Covid victim.

Burial ceremony rites, done in the Muslim faith had also become impossible to perform because of the lack of resources.

According to Islamic rituals the body needs to be washed, wrapped in a white piece of cloth, and then laid under the ground.

It wasn’t until Sajaad, a father of two, intervened in conducting burials that he began to slowly bring a sense of joy to his local community of Srinagar, Kashmir.

His daily routine of serving customers at the department store eventually changed and he was now spending hours making masks and visiting the homes of families in urgent need of a grave man.

The sudden shift in his responsibilities took place after he saw family struggling to bury a loved one, who had succumbed to the virus.

“I was traveling to town when I came across a lady’s funeral, who had just died of Covid-19, and no one was willing to go near her body to bury her. They all feared getting infected. This disturbed me and I decided to do something about it."

He offered the grieving family handmade Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and helped them bury the woman before filming a video appeal asking people to give him a call if they too needed help burying their relatives. The video quickly went viral on Facebook and in no time, he was receiving distress calls from worried families.

Sajaad, who understands first-hand the difficulties caused by the pandemic, soon realised he could be of greater service to his community and started handing out handmade gloves, gowns, shoe covers, headcovers, and masks for free.

Quite often he would wake up in the dead of the night to make the gear. Although not certified or approved by any medical agency, he told AWP that he used the "best raw material" available to him in the market and he claims the kits turned out to be “really good”.

One of the families he supported had been stuck with a loved one, who died after testing positive for Covid-19, for days. Strict measures and a lack of funds to pay for services and transport were some of the reasons families struggled to remove the bodies of loved ones.

Hundreds of families wanted their loved ones’ bodies cared for, but there was a shortage of people to do the funerals and rituals as graveyard workers were overwhelmed.

The shortage and Sajaad's sudden popularity convinced a group of young men between the ages of 30-35 to join him in his noble cause as demand for his services grew. By the end of the first wave in 2020, Sajaad had buried 208 Covid victims, but the numbers continued to increase as the virus left hundreds of thousands of people dead.

Asked about his thoughts on the idea that covid could be caught from the dead, he said: “I was not sure initially about any scientific basis of the stigma and conspiracy theories, but I took the risk. I listened to my inner voice that said, you are doing the right thing.

“I was not satisfied with my [previous] job; my heart always lied in social work. However, I wanted to work towards the greater good of humanity, and the pandemic provided me just the right opportunity."