Kerala, June 28 -- Sixty-four-year-old Narayanetta spent his last days alone at a government hospital. After his death, his family neither claimed his body and refused to perform his last rites. Instead, a 34-year-old Muslim woman from his hometown, Kasargod, stepped forward and cremated with full Hindu rites.

Irfana Iqbal works in the Kasaragod district panchayat and is a member of the Sheikh Zayed Foundation

On Friday, when Muslims everywhere observed Muharram, Irfana bid Narayanetta adieu at the public crematorium in Kasaragod's Chirugali, who succumbed to oral cancer on June 23 at the Government Medical College Hospital in Kozhikode.

The elderly man was found in a deplorable condition, surviving on the streets of Kasargod, by the o...