Know Your City: Uravugal Trust, the Chennai NGO ensuring dignified burial for homeless

The process starts with a person’s death on the streets. First, the police will investigate, and try to trace any living relatives of the unidentified body. After around 30 days of several other formal procedures, if the body is still not claimed, Uravugal Trust comes in and takes the body to any burial ground near the government hospital from which it is taken and buries it.

“If a person has four people to carry their body after death, they are rich. That is what we do. This is our duty,” says the founder.

The trust has its headquarters in Chennai and also operates in Chengalpattu and Thiruvallur districts. It now has more than 500 volunteers, mostly in the age group of 18 to 25.

Ahamed says the organisation also conducts awareness sessions in several educational institutions. While doing this, several youngsters observed and genuinely wanted to support this cause by volunteering, he says. These awareness sessions revolve around the topics of realising the importance of life, preventing suicide and so on. Ahamed says he has tended to more than 500 people who died by suicide.

One of the projects of Uravugal Trust was ‘Anbukku kaikuduppom’, under which a team visited several old-age homes and tended to their needs. Ahamed says that now the trust focuses mainly on death-related services, leaving no time to continue the project. However, he adds that the trust is still responsible for burying the dead from several old-age homes in the city.

On average, the team buries 10 to 20 bodies a day. In November this year, Ahamed says, they tended to the remains of 169 people. The pandemic threw several challenges in their way but they buried more than 1,500 bodies during the period, he adds.

“Right from 2017, the word no has never come out of our mouths. The trust also performs burials for families in need. Sometimes we have to travel to neighbouring states like Andhra Pradesh, Ahamed says. This we do by arranging vehicles on our own,” he says.

Ahamed says the expenses amount to nearly Rs 3.5 lakh per month and the funds mainly come from public donations.

“When we are in dire financial circumstances, sometimes our team members pawn our jewels to make sure we have enough money to run the organisation”, he adds.

When asked about the future, Ahamed says, “We cannot say that these services will continue in the future because all of us think these things should not happen. After all, no one is born abandoned.”