Jaunpur: In a tale straight out of a village thriller, a 75-year-old widower’s dream of companionship has unravelled into a web of whispers and halted rituals in Uttar Pradesh’s Jaunpur district.
Sangru Ram, a childless farmer from Khumuch village under Gora Badshahpur police station, breathed his last on Tuesday morning — the very day after his courthouse-cum-temple wedding to 35-year-old Manbhawati from Jalalpur.
Sangru, eking out a living from his fields since his first wife’s passing a year ago, had been quietly courting the idea of remarriage. Despite pleas from villagers to reconsider his choice of a bride 40 years his junior — herself a widow with two daughters and a son — he pressed on. “He promised to handle the kids while I managed the home,” Manbhawati recounted, her voice steady amid the storm. The couple chatted late into the night, but dawn brought distress: Sangru’s health plummeted, and doctors at the hospital pronounced him dead on arrival.
What should have been a sombre send-off turned chaotic when Sangru’s nephews, labouring in Delhi’s markets, rushed back and branded the death “suspicious”. Vowing no funerals until their arrival, they’ve frozen the rites, fuelling rampant speculation in the close-knit hamlet. Will police step in for a post-mortem probe, or will family feuds eclipse the facts?
This poignant saga underscores the perils of late-life leaps, leaving a bride bereft and a village on edge.