SSB jawans conducting last rites of the woman

Pithoragarh: When Jhupa Devi passed away at 100 in Tadegaon, a remote hamlet in Uttarakhand's Pithoragarh district, on Wednesday, only three able-bodied men -- her son Ramesh Chand, grandson Ravi Chand and another villager -- were at hand to carry her to the cremation ground, situated around 2-km away on the Kali riverbank, near the India-Nepal border.Unable to find a fourth male member to lend her a shoulder, they informed gram pradhan Deepak Bisht, who lives around 4-km away in Jayal village. The narrow paths linking these villages are often treacherous, and mindful of that fact, Bisht sent an SOS to the Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) unit stationed at the nearest border observation post (BOP) on Tadegoan's outskirts.

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The SSB sent its jawans to the village; and the defence team not just carried her remains to the riverbank, but also assisted in the funeral."As per tradition, only male members carry the dead to a cremation ground. In our village, there were only three males present at that time. We were hoping for at least 10 able-bodied men to turn up, but unfortunately, there weren't any. So, we had to inform the SSB officers.... Large-scale migration for education and work has left our village almost empty," gram pradhan, Bisht, told TOI."After we received the message from the pradhan, we immediately dispatched two junior officers and four jawans," added Deepak Kumar, an SSB officer at the BOP.

Spread across 3-sq km, about 150 people used to live in the tiny village, as per official records. However, over the years, almost all of them left in the quest of better education and health facilities in and around towns and cities, leaving behind only a few old people, women and little children. "Like most of the other remote hilly villages in Uttarakhand, there has been migration en masse from here too. And our village has now been turned into a place where there aren't enough men to even carry the dead to the burning ghats," an elderly villager said. According to state govt data, between 2011 and 2018, nearly 3.8 lakh residents left their villages temporarily. Another 3.07 lakh followed the same pattern between 2018 and 2022.

Since 2018, 24 villages have become uninhabited in the state, adding to 734 villages declared empty between 2011 and 2018.