It took a vis­it by High Court judge Frank Seep­er­sad to de­ter­mine that graves at the Mon­key Town Pub­lic Ceme­tery were dug up dur­ing road works last month.

As a re­sult of his find­ings, the judge or­dered the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment to pre­pare an ex­huma­tion or­der by Thurs­day.

This fol­lows a civ­il claim brought by 67-year-old Bar­rack­pore wid­ow Sav­it­ri Sookram against the Pe­nal Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion.

She claimed that the graves of sev­en of her loved ones in­clud­ing her hus­band were des­e­crat­ed and dis­turbed dur­ing works by a pri­vate con­trac­tor hired by the cor­po­ra­tion.

In her claim, she com­plained that bones and a part of a cof­fin were vis­i­ble. How­ev­er, the cor­po­ra­tion had coun­tered that the graves were not af­fect­ed. Dur­ing a vir­tu­al hear­ing last Tues­day, the judge grant­ed an in­junc­tion pre­vent­ing any ac­cess to the ceme­tery un­til his vis­it.

Sookram, court staff, a Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tive, at­tor­neys, and oth­er peo­ple in­volved in the mat­ter were present when the judge ar­rived at the Bar­rack­pore ceme­tery around 1.30 pm yes­ter­day. Af­ter see­ing the ex­tent of the dam­age, the judge said that in a civ­i­lized so­ci­ety the bod­ies would have been ex­humed and re­buried be­fore any work com­menced. He said this was not done and now they must do what is right to treat the dis­rupt­ed re­mains with re­spect.

The cor­po­ra­tion asked, how­ev­er, that the road works re­sume as no buri­als have been done since the in­ci­dent last month. The judge gave per­mis­sion for the works to con­tin­ue on the con­di­tion that it is con­tained to two feet from the re­tain­ing wall. He said the pri­ma­ry con­cern of the court at this stage was to en­sure that the dead rests in peace and to abate the emo­tion­al dis­tress of the af­fect­ed fam­i­ly. As for who will pay the costs of the ex­huma­tion and re­bur­ial, that will be de­ter­mined when the mat­ter re­sumes on Fri­day.

Asked what he ex­pects would hap­pen on that day, Sookram’s at­tor­ney Wayne Be­har­ry said, “We ex­pect that we have the Min­is­ter’s ap­proval for the ex­huma­tion and to fi­nal­ize who will bear the cost as­so­ci­at­ed with the ex­huma­tion which we are hope­ful that good­ness will pre­vail and the cor­po­ra­tion will stand the cost.”

If the par­ties fail to reach an agree­ment, the judge will give a rul­ing.