Frozen in Grief: Divorced Husband Shuns Wife’s Last Rites, Body Awaits Son from Canada

The body of a 70-year-old woman in a freezer in the Balasore district has been kept cold for four days in a freezer, as her divorced husband refuses to do the last rites, awaiting the arrival of their son in Canada.

Chhabirani De, a resident of Arad Bazar in Sahadevkhunta police station, came down at home on Sunday night, presumably from a cardiac arrest. She was rushed to the district headquarters hospital by the neighbours, and doctors declared her dead. This was followed by a touching standoff: her husband, retired bank manager of the region Shrustidhar De, came but refused to even touch the body, citing their long-time divorce. The people of the locality made an effort to intervene and persuade him not to leave until their son, Sanjib De, came back to the country.

Since there was no household available to cremate the bodies, the kind neighbours donated a freezer to keep the body preserved and prevent decomposition in the humid weather of Odisha. Police assured that the Sanjib will take place tomorrow, and therefore, then the final rites will be carried out. Shrustidhar, who spent several years sharing a household with Chhabirani, is at the location under societal pressure.

This episode brings out the intricacies of broken family relationships in the contemporary world, where the law splits against cultural demands of grief. People in the area were lamenting, saying that there must be understanding in these tragedies. It has not been addressed at the authority level, as people consider it a personal issue.