Overworked Indian crematorium starts to melt

A crematorium burning the bodies of earthquake victims in India became so overloaded it started to melt.

The hinges of the Saptarishi crematorium in Ahmedabad turned to molten metal. The furnace had to be cooled and the hinges replaced, before it could be fired up again.

Hindus believe that not cremating a body will send the person's soul in limbo - a fate worse than hell.

The electric furnace is maintained at 600C (1,112F), but the temperature in its inner chamber goes up when corpses are burned.

Syed Zain, the operator at another crematorium in Ahmedabad, said: "The bodies just keep coming in. Sometimes entire families, other times three or four members of a family."

Bodies unclaimed in hospitals or found on the streets are brought to be burned.

Crematorium staff gather the ashes of the unclaimed bodies and give them to a welfare organisation that will pour them at a holy site hundreds of miles away in northern India, where the Ganges and Yamuna rivers meet.

AB Mehta, manager at the Dudheshwar Cremation Home, said: "They may have died all alone, but we ensure that all the rituals are done. Maybe then they'll have a better life in their next birth."