According reports from the district, Kanak Satpathy, a 75-year-old woman, died after prolonged illness on Friday night.

Odisha’s Kalahandi, which was in the news recently when a tribal man carried his wife’s dead body for kilometres for want of transport, has hit the headlines again for the wrong reason.

With nobody coming forward to lend a helping hand, four daughters were forced to carry the body of their mother on their head to cremation ground in the Dokripada village of the district’s Golamunda block on Saturday.

According reports from the district, Kanak Satpathy, a 75-year-old woman, died after prolonged illness on Friday night.

Following the death, four of her daughters pleaded with their neighbours to help them in performing their mother’s last rites, but to no avail.

After waiting for hours, when the daughters saw no help forthcoming, they placed the body of their mother on a woven cot and started marching towards the cremation ground.

With no wood for the funeral pyre, they dismantled the roof of their house for the wood required for the cremation.

Of the four daughters, two are widows and two have been deserted by their husbands. As they did not have any source of living, they begged for food in order to survive.