A Dalit family in Patan Municipality-5 of Baitadi has been forced to bury a deceased woman twice after a shortage of mourners prevented them from performing her last rites according to tradition.

The body of 62-year-old Lalmati Koli of Simpani was found in the Syadi Khola on Saturday after it had been washed away from a riverbank where she had been buried a few days earlier.

Police later identified the body as Lalmati’s. According to Inspector Suraj Singh, spokesperson for the District Police Office, Baitadi, she had been buried on the riverbank after only a brief funeral rite.

Lalmati died at her home on July 21. Her nephew, Naresh Koli, said the family was unable to cremate her because there were too few mourners from their community to carry out the funeral.

According to Naresh, there are only eight Koli households in the village, and most of the young men are working in India. As a result, there were not enough men to carry the body or help prepare the funeral pyre.

“Only nine of us, including children, reached the cremation ground,” he said. “There were not enough people to collect firewood and build the pyre, so we performed the basic funeral rites and buried the body on the riverbank. Later, the river washed it away.”

He said members of other communities did not attend the funeral because it is not customary for them to touch the body of someone from the Koli community.

“Our village has a large population of Chhetris as well as Dalit communities such as the Luhar, Od and Damai,” Naresh said. “But we do not attend one another’s funerals.”

Ward chairman Phani Bohara said he was outside the district for medical treatment and was unaware of the death. Had he known, he said, he would have arranged the necessary support, including firewood for the funeral. He added that the ward would conduct awareness programmes to help eliminate such discriminatory practices.

Relatives said Lalmati’s body, recovered after being washed away by the river, had to be buried again because they still lacked enough mourners to conduct a proper cremation.

The practice of refusing to touch the body of someone from another caste persists not only in Patan Municipality but also in other villages across Baitadi district.

A similar incident occurred last year in Sigas Rural Municipality-1, where Prakash Tailor Damai had to keep the body of his 61-year-old mother at home for two days while waiting for relatives to arrive because he could not find enough local mourners to perform the funeral rites.