The good Samaritan from Bihar who is giving a dignified farewell to strangers

Naveen Shrivastava, a former UPSC aspirant from Gopalganj, has cremated over 350 unclaimed bodies in the past 15 years. His journey began when he lost his cousin in the Ganga river and he took it upon himself to give a dignified farewell to those who had no one to claim them. His family has supported him throughout and the police appreciate his work. Despite the pain of informing families of their loved one's death, he continues to do this selfless service.

In the past 15 years, Naveen Shrivastava, 52, has cremated more than 350 people – all strangers who needed a dignified farewell. What prompted the former UPSC aspirant from Gopalganj district to take up a job that no one was willing to do was a personal tragedy.

In 2001, he lost his cousin to the raging waters of the Ganga river in Allahabad. While he kept looking for the body for almost a month, the incident made Mr. Shrivastava take it upon himself to give a decent send-off to unclaimed bodies. “That one incident changed my life. My cousin Ritesh Kumar, who was in his early 20s, drowned in the Ganga while taking a holy dip. In the hope of recovering his body, I spent 32 days looking for it. I used to take a boat asking the boatmen to take me to the middle of the river, but every time I would find some unknown body. One day, a boatman asked what if that unknown body was that of my cousin’s. His words hit me hard and I took out that body and cremated it on the banks itself,” Mr. Shrivastava said.

The resident of Gopalganj Sadar near Manikpur village Mr. Shrivastava tried his luck in civil services. But after failing to crack it, he returned to his village in 2004 and started coaching civil service aspirants. In 2009, he opened Satakshi Civil Academy, followed by a trust named Satakshi Sewa Sansthan through which he resumed the work of cremating unclaimed bodies.

“The last body I cremated was in May 2023. Many a time, the local police contact me when nobody turns up to claim a body. After 72 hours, the police hand it over to our trust, and as per rituals we do the cremation. I have photographs of all the 352 dead bodies which I have cremated so far. My family, including his wife Shilpi, has always supported me. In fact, my mother gave me the money when I had cremated the first body in Gopalganj,” he said, adding that on an average ₹5,000 is spent on the cremation.

The police, too, appreciate Mr. Shrivastava’s work. “It also makes our work easy because we have limited resources. It is not possible for us to cremate every unclaimed body. So we contact him and he immediately responds. He is doing a huge social service,” said a police officer from Goplaganj police station.

But things are not so simple, always. Sometimes people do come looking for their loved ones long after they are cremated. Once a family member had contacted him after three months of cremation. “The youth had died in a road accident and a police complaint was lodged. However, the family members were traceless at the time,” he said.