Simla Thappa didn’t go with the men who took her father’s body from the village. By then, she recalls, her family had spent most of the day resisting a crowd that kept making the same demand: "Exhume! Exhume! Exhume!"
Her father, Patiram Thappa, 50, a farmer, died in hospital on 10 August 2023. The family brought him home to Iradah in Kanker district of the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh, and buried him early the next day. They wanted to do it a little later, but their friends had urged them to be quick, Thappa says, because some villagers were conspiring to stop the burial.
