COVID-19 dead give New Delhi gravedigger sleepless nights

Mohammed Shamim walks back to his home after the burial of a COVID-19 coronavirus victim in New Delhi.

Death had not fazed gravedigger Mohammed Shamim up to now, but since the grip of the coronavirus crisis has tightened in New Delhi, a shiver runs up even his spine each time he sees a hearse pull up at the cemetery he tends.

"I've been burying the dead for the last two decades. But until now, I've never been scared for my own life," he said.

Gravedigger Mohammed Shamim (L) instructs relatives of a COVID-19 victim during the burial at a graveyard in New Delhi.

Mohammed Shamim carries a bottle of sanitiser on the back of his shirt before the burial for a COVID-19 victim at a graveyard in New Delhi.

Shamim says he alone has dug graves for 115 bodies at the cemetery's designated area for coronavirus dead, about 200 metres away from the others.

Despite the third-generation gravedigger's experience, his family has now started complaining about his job at the Jadid Qabristan Ahle Muslim cemetery, and Shamim has moved his four daughters to his parents' house to reduce the risk of them catching the disease.

Gravedigger Mohammed Shamim instructs the relatives of a COVID-19 victim before the burial at a graveyard in New Delhi.

Shamim gets a call an hour before the hearse arrives. That is when he becomes nervous.

He prepares the relatives, asking them to put on protective suits, gloves and masks for the burial ceremony, before the family says a prayer and lowers the corpse - usually wrapped in cloth or plastic sheeting - into the grave.

The mourners then throw their protective gear into the hole before a mechanical earth-mover fills it in.

Mohammed Shamim directs an ambulance carrying the victims of COVID-19 for burial at a graveyard in New Delhi.

Gravedigger Shamim sanitises on his gloves before the burial of a COVID-19 victim at a graveyard in New Delhi.

The gravedigger has been so worried about the pandemic that he has twice been tested for the coronavirus, and paid for one himself of them despite his meagre wages.

"I always felt safest around the dead and most vulnerable in the outside world. Now I find it difficult to sleep at night," he said.