Russian authorities have placed Indian and Russian embassies in the dark and buried a 46-year-old man from Rajasthan. His family had a hard time recovering the body from the country for burial in Udaipur’s hometown. Apparently, the man was deprived of the basic rights of the last rite, as per his religion, because the body was buried without the permission of his relatives.
The bitter revelation of the funeral came with a letter to the deceased wife asking senior officials of the Moscow Investigative Service of the Russian Federation for the help of her lawyer to dig up the body and deliver it to relatives in India for the last rites.
Hitendra Galassia, 46, who lives in the village of Godwa in Udaipur, visited Russia through a travel agency in April of this year to look for a job. The victim’s family was informed through a local police station on September 17 that Hitendra had died in Russia and Russian police had recovered her body on July 17.
However, Russian officials recently refused to send the body out of Russia even after the investigation was over. And urged his relatives in Rajasthan to travel to Russia and perform funerals in Russia, but the cremation was not permitted in their country.
After a protest by the Hitendra family in New Delhi on December 4 in front of the Russian President Putin’s visit assured the family that both Russian and Indian embassies would facilitate the dispatch of the body.
Relatives also relocated Jodhpur’s Rajasthan High Court and demanded judicial intervention to facilitate the return of the bodies. Upon hearing this issue, the Rajasthan High Court took the matter seriously and urged the Center to take the best possible steps to bring the tribal body back from Udaipur. At the next hearing on this issue, the High Court urged the Center to disagree with the Russian government on the Hitendra Garasia funeral until the next hearing on December 20. The next hearing on this issue is January 4, 2022.
