Wayanad landslide | 'Put me in one grave’: Son keeps word; reunites mother’s remains after nearly a year

 “Back when she was alive, my mother used to joke about what we, her children, should do if she ever died in a landslide,” recalls Anil Kumar, 43, a resident of Chooralmala in Wayanad district. “And I wanted to fulfil the promise I had made to her. So, I fought for it.”

 

Last year, when massive landslides hit Chooralmala, Anil Kumar’s mother, Rajamma, was among the victims. Her body parts, severely dismembered, were recovered from near Pothukallu, in the neighbouring Malappuram district.

 

The remains were brought to Meppadi panchayat in Wayanad. Two separate body parts were recovered—one initially and the other nearly 10 days later—and so the burials were conducted in two different locations and in two phases.

 

When the DNA test results arrived, Anil Kumar learnt that his mother was buried in two graves—N-34 and N-213—at the mass burial site in Puthumala.

 

“My mother worked in highly landslide-prone areas—first plucking tea leaves and later in a cardamom plantation,” he says. “She used to tell us, half-jokingly but often, that if a landslide took her life and her limbs were found separately, we should not bury them in different places. ‘Put everything together in a single grave’, she would insist.”

 

Once the DNA reports confirmed the two separate burials, Anil Kumar submitted multiple petitions requesting that his mother’s remains be brought together. “For months, my petitions were caught in bureaucratic red tape,” he says. “Nothing moved.”

 

As the monsoon season approached, his anxiety deepened—he feared that exhumation and reburial would become even more difficult due to the rains.

 

Eventually, after a local news channel aired his story, DYFI activists came to support Anil Kumar. “It was found that no action has been taken on the file. But as pressure mounted, the officials responded,” says Anil Kumar, a tourist taxi driver whose livelihood itself was affected in the aftermath of the devastating landslide.

 

On June 26, the Wayanad District Collector issued a special order allowing the exhumation and reburial of Rajamma’s remains in a single grave.

 

Yesterday, on June 27, Anil Kumar finally fulfilled the promise he had made to his mother. “It’s a big relief,” he says, “to have given her a dignified goodbye.”

India