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When Rakhi, a 44-year-old woman from Chhattisgarh, passed away at a rehabilitation centre in Thiruvananthapuram, there was no family around to fulfil her last wish, to have her final rites conducted according to Hindu tradition. Stepping in where no one else could, local ward member T Safeer, a practising Muslim, performed the rituals himself.

Rakhi had been a resident of the Benedict Menni Psycho Social Rehabilitation Centre for two and a half years, after being shifted from the Kuthiravattam Mental Hospital. She had been battling cancer in its final stage and died on Friday, September 12.

“I had met her when she was taken to the hospital before her death. As the local ward member, I felt it was my duty to perform her last rites i

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