Lack of space and bureaucracy prompt some in a Christian congregation in a southern city to share graves.

A Christian congregation in Kochi, in the southern Indian state of Kerala, has been forced to find a new way to bury the dead, because their cemetery is running out of room and expanding a graveyard in India is often blocked by objections, bureaucracy and paperwork.

Father Jose Chiramel has come up with a new option, which is to share graves.

That new practice has an effect on the city of Kochi’s largest coffin producer. But with land at a premium and increasing in value, these new alternatives may come to be seen by other faiths as a way of solving their own burial problems.

Al Jazeera’s Sohail Rahman reports from Kochi.