UK court rejects bid to allow Hindu-style funeral pyres

After years of campaigning and legal wrangling, a 70-year-old UK-based devout Hindu man on Friday lost a court bid to be cremated on a traditional open-air funeral pyre, a test case for the community in Britain.

The British High Court rejected the bid of Davender Ghai, from Gosforth in Newcastle, saying that pyres were prohibited by law. Justice Cranston said the prohibition was "justified" but allowed Mr. Ghai to approach the Court of Appeal.

If Mr. Ghai had won, the case could have opened floodgates for similar appeals for outdoor cremation to be made legal in the UK. Mr. Ghai was seeking to overturn a decision by Newcastle City Council in 2006 preventing funeral pyres from being held.

The Council had said the practice is impractical.

During a hearing in March, Mr. Ghai, the founder of the Anglo-Asian Friendship Society (AAFS), told a judge that a Hindu-style funeral pyre was essential to a "good death" and the release of his spirit into the afterlife. He said he wanted to die "with dignity" and not be "bundled in a box".

Justice Cranston said that Justice Secretary Jack Straw, who had resisted Mr. Ghai's legal challenge, argued that people might be "upset and offended" by pyres and "find it abhorrent that human remains were being burned in this way". - PTI