Warangal (Andhra): In an unparalleled tale of human love cutting across religions, a Muslim woman stepped in and laid a 75-year-old Hindu man to rest, performing the Hindu religious rites herself, when his Christian son refused to do so.
Yakub Bi, a Muslim woman from Warangal in the State of Andhra Pradesh In India, has become the icon of humanity by performing the last rites of Keerthi Srinivas when his son who had converted to Christianity, refused to do it, citing religious reasons.
Yakub Bi performed the traditional Hindu religious rites, walking around the funeral pyre with an earthen pot on her shoulder and lighting his pyre.
Srinivas was abandoned by his son Sharath when the former refused to convert to Christianity. He worked in a tailor shop near Old Bus Depot area in Hanamkonda for some time and turned a beggar when he was partially paralyzed two years ago.
He was rehabilitated at an old age home run by Chotu Muhammed where Chotu’s wife Yakub Bi acted as his caretaker for two years.
Srinivas, however, breathed his last on July 5. Yakub Bi traced his son Sharath, but he left the old age home after a quick visit refusing to perform the last rites of his father citing reasons of religious difference.
It is reported that, though his relatives and friends pleaded with Sharath to perform the rituals for his father as prescribed by Christianity, the son was adamant. He even refused to touch his father’s body.
It was then, Yakub Bi, who had regarded the old man like her father, stepped in.
