The Delhi High Court on Friday disposed of a public interest litigation seeking the court’s intervention to investigate allegations of unauthorised sale, illegal construction, and encroachment in Christian graveyards in the National Capital.
The bench on Friday disposed of the plea with a direction to the Union government through its secretary/estate officer under the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) to treat the grievances in the petition as a representation and decide the same in accordance with law.
Three petitioners, Cheryl Betsy Matthew, Aradhana Singh and Khushboo George, who are advocates practising in the district courts of Delhi, moved the high court highlighting instances of “illegal exhumation of mortal remains, unauthorised body-doubling, encroachment and the unwarranted sale of burial spaces”.
The petitioners had approached the high court in October after several representations and complaints to the local Delhi authorities were not acted upon.
In their petition, taken up before the bench of Chief Justice Manmohan and Justice Manmeet Pritam Singh Arora on Friday and Thursday, it was also submitted that graveyard committees, responsible for owning/administering graveyards, “charge exorbitant amounts of money for burial, for the land and services which accompany such burial.” The petition alleges that the committee after allotting burial plots to families then “arbitrarily and without consent of the bereaved family sell the burial plot or create third party interests, exhume bodies, some buried just five months ago, in the name of body doubling, and impose that funeral services be taken from their committees only.”
Submitting that graveyards are public premises as understood under The Public Premises (Eviction of Unauthorised Occupants) Act, 1971, the petitioners submitted that the estate officer has the rights vested in him to hold an inquiry into matters or complaints pertaining to illegal encroachment. The petitioners have also submitted that civic authorities of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) and the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) too are empowered to act on complaints of encroachment.
The petitioners submitted, “State Authorities and Municipal Bodies have grossly and in a bland fashion failed to protect Christian burial grounds from encroachments, illegal sales and misuse by not acting on complaints, such delay in action is a violation of the Right to Practice Religion freely.”
Submitting that there are currently two major committees, namely the Delhi Cemeteries Committee and the Indian Christian Cemetery Committee, which together administer six graveyards, the petitioners have alleged that “general stores and pharmaceuticals stand in full glory and honour, crowding the cemeteries’ bounds.”
The petition also alleged that “sale in parts of burial grounds to businesses and housing residences, when this is strictly against law and order”, is being undertaken “to siphon off unaccounted colossal amounts of money.”
