The Madras High Court on Thursday delivered an authoritative pronouncement that dead bodies cannot be buried at will in any place in village panchayats and such burial can take place only in places designated under the Tamil Nadu Village Panchayat (Provision of Burial and Burning Grounds) Rules, 1999.
A Full Bench comprising Justices R. Mahadevan, G. Jayachandran and Mohammed Shaffiq delivered the verdict while answering a reference made to them by the first Division Bench of Chief Justice S. V. Gangapurwala and Justice P. D. Audikesavalu due to conflicting views of other Division Benches of the court.
The Full Bench held that residents of village panchayats could not construe Rule 7 (which prohibits burning or burying any corpse in any place within 90 meters of a dwelling place or source of drinking water supply) to mean that they could bury the corpses in any place beyond 90 metres from a dwelling place of source of drinking water.
“Rule 7(1) cannot be construed as a right to bury a body anywhere and everywhere. Burial or burning of a body is subject to the other provisions in the Rules. The conditions of distance restriction from the water body cannot be read in isolation unmindful of the purpose of the Rules and other provisions thereunder,” the three judges wrote.
The judges also ruled that any body buried in an undesignated place, in contravention of the 199 rules, must be exhumed and buried in the designated place if the violation was brought to the notice of the authorities concerned within a reasonable time. If the individuals refuse to exhume the body, the officials could do it and recover the costs, the Bench added.
