Mohammad Shareef

A bicycle mechanic by trade, Shareef was called to his unlikely vocation by personal tragedy. In December 1992, his eldest son Mohammad Rais – a chemist in his early 20s – disappeared amid the Hindu-Muslim riots that followed the destruction of an Ayodhya mosque by Hindu fundamentalists. After a frantic month-long search for Rais, Shareef was notified by the police that his son’s body had been found, but was too decomposed to be collected.

Shareef’s grief turned to horror weeks later, when he witnessed police dumping a dead body in the river – a not uncommon practice in northern India, as a cheap and expedient means of corpse disposal. Imagining that his son had likely suffered the same indignity, Shareef became determined to spare others from such a fate. Speaking to the BBC in 2020, he said, “That day I said to myself…I am the guardian of abandoned dead bodies and I will give them a proper funeral."

While anonymous deaths happen everywhere in the world, the problem of unclaimed bodies is pronounced in India. Throughout the country, widespread poverty and high rates of rural-urban migration have led to significant numbers of people who are unhoused or living in unstable circumstances, often disconnected from family or community. When these and other impoverished people die, often there is no one to pay for their funeral.

In India, the job of burying and cremating bodies has long been relegated to the Dalits, the most socially excluded group in the Hindu caste hierarchy. Shareef, a Muslim, was ostracized by family and friends when he took up this work. Still, he remained committed to his cause, making daily rounds to local hospitals, police stations and morgues to inquire about unclaimed bodies.

Shareef would accept any unclaimed body, regardless of its physical condition. With his four-wheeled cart, he ferried the remains to a room at a local cemetery, where he bathed them. When the religion of the deceased could be determined, Shareef administered last rites accordingly: Muslims were buried and Hindus cremated. 

Over time, Shareef earned the respect and appreciation of his community – and eventually national recognition in the Padma Shri. Still, as he explained to the New Indian Express, it was the personal solace he found in this work that kept him going: “Whenever I take a body for the last rites, I feel as if it is my son. Blood has no religion. It is [the] same in both Hindus and Muslims. While taking a body for last rites, I feel that his/her parents, wherever they are, will get peace.”

Contributor: Erin Brown