The Mon­key Town Pub­lic Ceme­tery Gar­den of Rest was this week dam­aged and turned in­to “a gar­den of un­rest and dis­re­spect” as about 20 graves were in­dis­crim­i­nate­ly dug up and the dead dis­turbed.

Sev­er­al mem­bers of three af­fect­ed fam­i­lies found their way on the ceme­tery grounds on Thurs­day to speak with the Guardian Me­dia crew who was on hand to see the on­go­ing ex­ca­va­tion works which be­gan on Tues­day and are on­go­ing.

Fam­i­ly mem­bers said they are up­set about the al­leged im­prop­er ac­tion tak­en by the Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion.

The res­i­dents claimed that part of the earth on the east­ern side start­ed to cave in and a con­trac­tor was al­leged­ly hired by the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion which is chaired by Dr Allen Sam­my to put down fence posts for a re­tain­ing wall. How­ev­er, they said the con­trac­tor moved in and start­ed work on the wrong part of the ceme­tery dig­ging up graves, de­stroy­ing memo­r­i­al tomb­stones and en­clo­sures of their loved ones caus­ing stress and heartache.

The res­i­dents claimed they were told that the con­trac­tor said he did not see the tomb­stones and added that he can­not stop the work that he has al­ready start­ed.

One res­i­dent, who wished not to be iden­ti­fied said, “How could he not have seen it even when he moved in all his equip­ment? The equip­ment rolled over some of the tomb­stones and de­stroyed it. Most of the graves lo­cat­ed on the right side of the ceme­tery were al­so un­earthed. This is sad and a night­mare to us.”

A pop­u­lar fam­i­ly in the area, the Dowlat fam­i­ly, who has about 11 bur­ial plots there said al­though the graves of their loved ones weren’t dug up it still is shock­ing to them.

“This ceme­tery has al­ways been close to my heart and ever so of­ten I would make my way to South to vis­it my fa­ther’s grave. I wish to be buried there one day too. I can’t be­lieve that the dead would have been dis­re­spect­ed like that.”

Res­i­dent Videsh Siewsankar said five graves be­long­ing to his rel­a­tives were de­stroyed.

“They want to tell us that no graves were on this side but you can clear­ly see graves dug up and pieces of tombs dug up and turned up­side down and dis­lo­cat­ed from the re­spec­tive graves. It is ex­treme­ly dis­gust­ing that no one con­sult­ed the ceme­tery keep­er. The ceme­tery keep­er said that had he been con­sult­ed he would have let the PDRC and con­trac­tors know that this side of the ceme­tery is well pop­u­lat­ed.”

He added, “No oth­er fam­i­lies have been con­tact­ed ex­cept us. They ne­glect­ed to in­form oth­er peo­ple which is gross­ly dis­re­spect­ful be­cause when you cel­e­brate their life and put them to rest here and then have them strewn in­dis­crim­i­nate­ly and no at­tempts were made to re­claim the re­mains for us to have re­buri­als or to prop­er­ly ex­hume the bod­ies of our loved ones shows that the cor­po­ra­tion has no re­spect for the fam­i­lies.”

Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Dr Allen Sam­my in re­sponse to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia said, “ As soon as it was drawn to our at­ten­tion on Tues­day af­ter­noon we re­quest­ed that the mat­ter be ad­dressed im­me­di­ate­ly by our tech­ni­cal team. They went on Wednes­day and again Thurs­day morn­ing to in­ves­ti­gate the mat­ter. The CEO al­so vis­it­ed giv­en the se­ri­ous­ness of the com­plaint. I will be seek­ing an up­date on the mat­ter.”