At a time when victims of the coronavirus were being denied their last rites, with even relatives, in many cases, deciding to stay away from lost loved ones, a group of strangers stepped up to give the dead a dignified farewell amid the pandemic.
Their selfless actions have set a new benchmark for humanity, overcoming various social and religious barriers along the way against the backdrop of an unprecedented crisis.
In the process, these volunteers sacrificed being with their loved ones amid safety concerns. Although the beneficiaries remained grateful to them, some members of society tried to drive them away and placed various obstacles in front of them. But the volunteers soldiered on and continued laying to rest one Covid-19 victim after another, while also arranging for the treatment of the infected.
“If it wasn’t for the pandemic, we wouldn’t have realised that a person’s brother, wife and children can abandon them in such a short period of time, out of fear of a virus,” Maksudul Alam Khandaker Khorshed, Narayanganj City Corporation councillor and a volunteer, told bdnews24.com.
The first Covid-19 patient in the country was identified on Mar 8, 2020 in Dhaka. The virus, which claimed the lives of millions in America and Europe, soon swept across the country and caused panic within the general population.
The homes of the infected were cordoned off in order to curb the spread of the virus followed by zone-based shutdowns, with the entire country going into lockdown for about two months at one point.
During this period, patients, doctors, nurses and volunteers were subjected to social harassment due to widespread misunderstandings about the disease but the situation has improved in recent times.
At the start of the outbreak in March, Councillor Khorshed took to the field to provide safety equipment, relief and medicine to those in need.
As the outbreak intensified, in early April, he was forced to conduct burials. Afterwards, he went on to oversee the funeral services of around 150 individuals who died of Covid-19 or were suspected to have been infected.
Elaborating on the early days of the pandemic, Khorshed said: “There was this one occasion when I did not have the time to look at the face of a man whom I’d buried. I did not see any of his relatives that day except for his wife and two daughters. Afterwards, I found out that he was my childhood friend. We grew up together but he had moved to the other side of town later on.”
From April to mid-December, Khorshed has conducted the funeral rites of 142 people with his team of 15 volunteers. Of them, 25 were followers of religions other than Islam. But in light of an escalating crisis in the early stages, religious differences had to be cast aside.
“One day, a Hindu gentleman called and said his brother-in-law was in bad shape and asked us to visit. After arriving, we saw a man lying on the stairs between the second and third floor. The people in the building weren’t allowing the victim’s wife, mother and daughter to cry out loud, fearing an adverse reaction from the neighbours.”
None of the relatives came forward to help when her husband was having breathing difficulties, the victim’s wife told Khorshed.
“Later, I dialled 999 and called an ambulance. The man died as his mother-in-law and I were taking him down the stairs.”
The situation was dire back then, Khorshed recalled. No-one helped arrange the victim’s funeral, not even by way of offering advice or instructions on how it should be conducted.
“‘As human beings, I demand that you find a way (to arrange the last rites) for my husband,’ said his wife. We were all fasting that day; everyone in our group was a Muslim. The incident occurred on the second day of Ramadan. But we didn’t want our religious beliefs to become a barrier that day. We burnt the body ourselves.”
Recalling another incident, Khorshed said, “It happened the day after Eid-ul-Fitr. I found another infected Hindu gentleman. He had no children. We were told over the phone that he had stopped eating and was suffering from diarrhoea.
