Hindu wins right to open air cremations
10/Feb/2010
A Hindu spiritual healer today won the right to be cremated on a traditional funeral pyre, opening the way for thousands of the cremations to take place in the British countryside.
Davender Ghai, 71, who believes that a pyre is essential to ''a good death'' and the release of his spirit into the afterlife, was refused permission to be cremated according to his Hindu beliefs by Newcastle City Council and lost a challenge to that decision at the High Court in London in May last year.
But today the Master of the Rolls, Lord Neuberger, who headed a panel of three
appeal judges, said before delivering the court's ruling: ''Contrary to what
everyone seems to have assumed below, and I am not saying it is anyone's
fault, it seems to us that Mr Ghai's religious and personal beliefs as to
how his remains should be cremated once he dies can be accommodated within
current cremation legislation.''
Source and full story: Telegraph
(Tags: burial related, law and politics)