Subscribe
Jitu Munda, 65, carried his sister’s skeletal remains to a bank in Odisha’s Keonjhar district after repeated attempts to access her savings failed.
A fact-finding report by the Right to Food Campaign and Rethink Aadhaar says the incident followed weeks of institutional neglect, delayed death certification and denial of welfare benefits.
Mr Munda said he had no ration card or old-age pension, and was surviving by begging after the death of his sister, Kalra Munda.
Activists say the case exposes serious gaps in social security, healthcare, banking access and welfare delivery for elderly, tribal and destitute people.
After the incident drew public attention, Mr Munda received a ration card, old-age pension and access to his sister’s bank account.
Jitu Munda, 65, who made headlines after carrying his sister’s skeletal remains on his shoulder to a bank in Odisha’s Keonjhar district on April 27, 2026, has now performed her last rites again by hosting a community feast.
“I exhumed the body of my elder sister Kalra Munda and carried it to the bank to show the authorities as proof. So the members of my community insisted that I perform the last rites again. Otherwise, my family would have been socially boycotted, not even allowed to attend social functions or access water,” said Munda.
When this writer visited him at his village, Dianali, in Patna block, a few relatives had come to meet him. Since the day he carried the skeletal remains to the bank, many people — politicians, officials and journalists — have visited him regularly. He has had to tell the same story again and again.
Many things have changed in his small one-room house, built under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana, since the incident. Apart from donations from different sources, he has received an iron cot, mattress, pedestal fan, bicycle, aluminium box and sacks of rice, potatoes and onions.
He also received a pair of slippers as a donation after videos of his barefoot walk in the scorching heat went viral.
But the months before the incident were very different. Munda had been struggling for survival.
The events of April 27 had a long history. Kalra Munda had been widowed long ago and had since been living with her brother Jitu in Dianali village, under Erendei gram panchayat. The village has a sizeable habitation of around 200 to 250 households, spread across four hamlets. In the hamlet where Munda lives, families belonging to the Mahanta, Munda and other communities live together. The Munda community is among the smallest in the village. Munda and his other family members represent it and live adjacent to each other.
Although Kalra had two other brothers, she chose to live with Jitu, who is unmarried. They had no agricultural land and worked as daily wage labourers for a living. As both grew older, it became difficult for them to find wage work, and the two siblings began to beg to survive.
“Every day it was a struggle to have a full plate of rice. Many days we slept on an empty stomach,” Munda said.
Kalra was receiving subsidised rice through the Public Distribution System (PDS) under the Antyodaya Anna Yojana of the National Food Security Act, along with a widow pension through the state social security scheme.
She last withdrew her ration and pension in January, before her death. Despite extreme poverty, she had managed to open a savings account at the Odisha Grameen Bank’s Maliposhi branch, around 3 kilometres from their village.
The family had sold the bullocks they owned and deposited Rs 19,300 in Kalra’s account.
Munda said that a few months before her death, Kalra’s health began to deteriorate. To meet medical expenses, he and his brother Shankar Munda went to the bank twice to withdraw money from her account.
But, he said, he was told he could not do so because he was not the account holder.
He continued to make repeated visits to the bank, but was unable to withdraw any money. Meanwhile, in the absence of adequate medical care and against a backdrop of acute poverty, Kalra Munda’s health continued to decline.
“When I repeatedly asked to withdraw the money, the bank staff said my sister had to be present at the branch to withdraw the money. I came and searched for a vehicle to take her to the bank, but no one agreed to carry her,” he said.
After prolonged illness and untreated health problems, Kalra died on 26 January 2026.
Apart from approaching bank officials, Munda had also approached the ASHA worker, Anganwadi worker and ward member for help in getting a death certificate.
But, according to him, the ASHA worker told him it would take nearly five years to get the death certificate.
This writer tried to contact the ASHA and Anganwadi workers, but they were absent on the day of the visit and did not answer phone calls.
A family member of Munda said that because of negligence, the ASHA worker neither followed up the matter nor collected the required documents on time. After two months, the ASHA worker finally submitted the documents at the Maliposhi sub-centre for processing birth and death certificates.
After his sister’s death, Munda struggled to meet his expenses. He spent days hungry because he did not have a ration card to receive PDS rice. Even though he is above 60, he is not receiving an old-age pension.
“I was surviving on begging. Every day it was difficult to arrange money for survival. That is why I wanted to withdraw from my sister’s account,” he said.
On April 27, staff and customers at the Odisha Grameen Bank in Maliposhi village were shocked and panicked when they saw a tribal man carrying skeletal remains on his shoulder. He came and sat on the verandah of the bank, placing the remains beside him.
Mangal Giri, a customer who was present that day, said: “At around 11 am, Jitu came and spoke with the cashier to withdraw money. The cashier, Gayatri Khatual, explained the procedure and asked him to produce the death certificate. Then he went to meet the manager, Sushant Kumar Sethi. He also said to bring the account holder or produce proof of her death by producing legal-heir documents.”
Giri said Munda returned at around 1pm, carrying the skeletal remains of his sister, and sat on the verandah.
“Seeing him, the bank staff closed the grills to stop him entering inside,” he said.
Bank staff then called the police. The police convinced Munda that his request would be heard and asked him to place the skeleton back in the same place where it had been buried.
Munda then walked 3km again in the scorching heat and buried the skeleton once more.
Rosy Barik, a Bank Mitra who helps illiterate tribal people with banking transactions, said: “We had no idea that Kalra Munda had died, or else we would have helped him in producing legal-heir documents to withdraw money from his sister’s account.”
The Right to Food Campaign and Rethink Aadhaar released a fact-finding report on the circumstances that led Munda to carry the skeletal remains of his deceased sister.
The report found what it described as a prolonged chain of institutional neglect, administrative indifference and systemic denial of basic survival entitlements, which reduced an already destitute family to a condition of complete abandonment by the state.
Sameet Panda, convener of the Right to Food Campaign, who led the four-member fact-finding team, said: “We found Kalra’s death certificate was withheld for more than three months despite the death being known to local officials.”
“Jitu Munda was also denied a ration card and an old-age pension because he could not produce his biometrics-linked Aadhaar ID, even though his identity, residence, age and destitution were known in the village. But the irony is the death certificate, ration card, pension and bank-related assistance were all processed within days after the incident received public attention,” Panda said.
The Right to Food Campaign and Rethink Aadhaar have demanded a time-bound judicial or independent administrative inquiry.
They have also sought immediate statewide directions to ensure ration cards, pensions and other welfare benefits are not withheld on Aadhaar-related procedural grounds.
The groups have demanded mandatory registration and certification of deaths within seven days in all cases involving pensioners, ration-card holders, elderly people, widows and vulnerable communities.
They have also called for humane banking procedures for people who are bedridden, elderly, destitute, or for deceased account holders, including doorstep banking and simplified legal-heir access mechanisms.
Manoranjan Swain, a member of the Right to Food Campaign and another member of the fact-finding team, said the incident exposed serious gaps in the delivery of social security, healthcare, banking access and welfare protections for the most vulnerable citizens.
“The bank officials should have handled it more sensitively,” he said.
Meanwhile, after the last rites were performed again, Kalra’s grave was concretised.
Munda has now been given a ration card to receive PDS rice every month and Rs 1,000 under old-age pension. His sister’s savings account has been transferred to his name so that he can withdraw the money easily.
Though he has no plan to spend the donations he has received from different sources, he has decided to invest in the education of the children in his family.
“In the last few days, many things have developed, but I am yet to overcome the incident of carrying my sister’s skeleton,” Munda said, with a blank look.