A 17-year-old boy was forced to carry his mother's body on a cycle in Odisha after their neighbours refused to help as they belong to a lower caste.
Saroj covered his mother's body with a saree and placed her body across the seat of the cycle. The young boy then had to go through the ordeal of cycling almost five kilometres in Karpabhal to perform her final rites.
According to India Today, Saroj buried his mother in the forest because he was denied a burial ground.
His neighbours knew the situation that a teenager was struggling to conduct the last rites for his mother, but chose not to do anything just because they belonged to a higher caste.
Janki, 45, had passed away when she fell down while fetching water a few days back. When Saroj went to his neighbours for help, he just saw doors closing on his face.
While taken his mother's body, Saroj was asked by an India Today reporter who he was carrying and in a small voice, he said, "my mother".
Saroj's father had passed away a few years back. So Janki, with her son and daughter, stayed in her paternal village.
However, this is not the first time that such an incident has taken place in Odisha. A man had to walk eight kilometres carrying his seven-year-old daughter's body in a sack. The family had informed the police who came and took photos of the body and instructed the family to get the body to the hospital for a post-mortem.
However, they did not help with the transportation, making the man carry his daughter's body in a sack since he could not afford to hire a vehicle.
