People defy ban to pray at sati site

RAIPUR: Dozens of people in Chhattisgarh’s Raipur district on Monday offered prayers at the site where a woman committed ‘sati’ by jumping onto her husband’s pyre despite a ban imposed by the police on the worship of the woman.

On Saturday, Lalmati Verma, 71, jumped onto her husband’s pyre after all the villagers had left the site on the bank at the confluence of two rivers - Mahanadi and Shivnath - in Chechar village, about 125 km from here.

As the news of her having committed sati spread, people carrying coconut, sweets and incense sticks began flocking to the site. Additional police personnel have been deployed in the village, which has a population of about 1,000, to impose a ban on the worship.

“Police have banned the worship of the woman as we see it as an act of glorification of the banned Hindu custom,” Amit Kumar, Raipur district superintendent of police, said.

“It’s hard to stop people from worshipping the woman, especially when a sati temple already exists close to the site. The temple is dedicated to a woman of the same village who committed sati nearly four decades ago,” police said.

Lalmati had come for the funeral of her husband Shivnandan Verma, 80, dressed in a bridal sari. Before committing suicide, she made a couple of rounds of the pyre holding a coconut and a copy of the Ramayana.

Police came to know about the incident on Saturda. An FIR was lodged on Sunday after a local police team visited the sati site and interrogated dozens of villagers.
On Monday, police registered a case against seven relatives of the deceased woman under the Commission of Sati (Prevention) Act.