Hindu loses pyre cremation battle

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Spiritual healer Davender Ghai, 70, told a judge at a recent hearing that a pyre was essential to "a good death" and the release of his spirit into the afterlife.

Mr Ghai, from Gosforth, Newcastle upon Tyne, was challenging a refusal by Newcastle City Council to permit him to be cremated according to his Hindu beliefs.

Mr Justice Cranston, sitting in London, dismissed the challenge, saying pyres were prohibited by law, and the prohibition was "justified".

The judge gave Mr Ghai permission to appeal against his ruling to the Court of Appeal. He said: "I don't think there is a real prospect of success, but it seems to me sufficiently a matter of public importance for me to give permission to appeal."

In his ruling the judge said: "The Cremation Act 1902 and its attendant 2008 regulations are clear in their effect: the burning of human remains, other than in a crematorium, is a criminal offence. This effectively prohibits open air funeral pyres."

He said Mr Ghai had invoked Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which protects religious freedom, and Article 8 (the right to private and family life). But the judge ruled: "In my view the prohibition on open air funeral pyres in the 1902 Act and the 2008 regulations is justified."

The judge said Justice Secretary Jack Straw, who had resisted Mr Ghai's legal challenge, had argued others in the community would be "upset and offended" by pyres and "find it abhorrent that human remains were being burned in this way."

Mr Ghai took issue with this, and it was "a difficult and sensitive issue", said the judge. But the court had to give precedence to the conclusion of elected representatives.

Mr Ghai's lawyers had contended that "with time, education and publicity" the public would recognise that open air funeral pyres were "a practice worthy of respect." The judge said that was a political issue, not for the courts, and those in favour of pyres would have to engage with the political process and attempt to change "the present balance of interests".