Even death costs dearly in Dhaka
For families in Dhaka, the grief of losing a loved one is increasingly being compounded by the financial burden that follows. From transporting the body to arranging funeral meals, the costs can add up to tens of thousands of taka, often when families are least prepared to pay
Death brings grief first. Then comes the long list of things needed to bury the deceased.
First, the body has to be brought back from the hospital. It has to be washed and prepared for burial. There is kafan cloth to buy, a grave to dig, and bamboo and matting to arrange. There are registration and other documentation charges to pay. And, in many families, there is food to prepare for the relatives and neighbours who gather after the burial.
Mahmoud Sajal was 20 years old and preparing for college admissions when his father died.
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"I was still in shock when I had to arrange an ambulance and buy the other things needed," he said. "I remember paying for them with the money my father had given me for admissions coaching. I was too shocked to think of asking anyone else for it."
Each expense, on its own, may not seem like much. But when they arrive one after another, they can add up to a bill that a family is hardly prepared to face.
A costly final journey
For families, the expense begins with transporting the body.
A Dhaka-based freezing van driver said that taking a body from Square Hospital to Azimpur Graveyard — a journey of roughly 30 minutes — now costs about Tk5,000. He said the same journey used to cost around Tk3,000 during the Covid-19 pandemic, attributing the increase to higher fuel prices and other operating costs.
If the body needs to be delivered to a faraway district, the cost is proportionately higher. For example, a distance of 90 to 100 kilometres from Dhaka to Tangail will cost Tk10,000 to Tk12,000. An additional Tk500 is charged for every passing hour the van is kept waiting at the burial site.
And transportation is only the beginning. Before burial, the body has to be washed and wrapped in kafan cloth.
Shahin Alam, proprietor of a shop in Mohammadpur Town Hall Market that sells items needed for funeral rites, said a standard three-piece men's kafan now costs Tk1,100. Around five years ago, he said, the same kafan cost about Tk900. For women, a standard five-piece kafan now costs Tk1,600–1,700, compared with around Tk1,200 five years ago, according to Alam.
The price rises with the quality of the material. Alam said kafan can even cost as much as Tk4,000–5,000.
His shop also sells the items used to prepare the body for burial, including attar, camphor, surma, soap and rosewater. Depending on the quality, a package containing these items costs around Tk2,500–3,000, he said, mentioning a similar package cost less than Tk1,000 five years ago.
The increase has also changed the economics of the business.
"Yes, we make a profit when someone dies. During Covid-19, we did not have enough of these materials to meet demand. Now we make only two or three sales a week," Alam said.
The exact cost of washing and preparing a body can vary depending on who provides the service and whether the family uses facilities at the public cemetery.
Dhaka South City Corporation's digital cemetery management system says its cemeteries provide facilities for washing the deceased, offering funeral prayers and burial.
There is also an additional cost when a body needs to travel a long distance: a coffin.
When someone dies in a hospital away from their hometown, transporting the body back home can be difficult, particularly for families who cannot afford an air-conditioned ambulance. In such cases, relatives often buy a coffin to transport the body.
Adult coffins are generally five to six feet long, while those made for children are usually two to three feet long. Depending on the size and quality of the wood, a coffin costs Tk1,100–1,500.
The price of a grave
The cost of burial depends on which city corporation manages the graveyard.
Nurul Huda, a mohuror (cemetery registrar) at Azimpur Graveyard, said a family currently pays Tk1,000 as the registration fee for a burial there. After 18 months, a period enough for a body to dispose properly, another burial takes place on the same grave.
But there is currently no scope for preserving graves at Azimpur under the present practice. He said the system was stopped after the interim government period. That means families burying someone in an ordinary grave at Azimpur are not currently paying a separate preservation fee.
He said bamboo, matting, grave-digging and other associated costs add another Tk1,000–1,200.
Dhaka South's official website still lists the cost of grave preservation. According to a source of the city corporation, however, the website has not been updated for years. This explains the discrepancy.
The picture is different under Dhaka North City Corporation, though the underlying policy is the same across its graveyards.
"The main crisis is the lack of space. If we agree to preserve every grave for 15 to 25 years, there will be no space left for burial in the graveyard. That's why the price is kept so high — to keep people from preserving their graves."
Advance preservation — reserving a grave before a death occurs — is closed at all six of its graveyards. But subject to approval and space availability, a limited system for granting 15- and 25-year reservations still operates at each one, on a case-by-case basis.
At Banani, that limited system comes at a steep price. Mohammad Harun-or-Rashid, a mohuror there, said a 15-year reservation currently costs around Tk3 crore, and a 25-year reservation Tk4.5 crore, for a plot of about 20 square feet — far more than a 1,000-square-foot flat would cost in the same neighbourhood.
The money can be paid through instalments.
The pricing is deliberate. "The main crisis is the lack of space. If we agree to preserve every grave for 15 to 25 years, there will be no space left for burial in the graveyard. That's why the price is kept so high — to keep people from preserving their graves," Harun-or-Rashid said.
Other Dhaka North graveyards charge considerably less under the same system. At Mirpur Shaheed Buddhijibi Graveyard, a 15-year reservation costs Tk20 lakh and a 25-year reservation costs Tk30 lakh, though preservation in some areas can cost as much as Tk90 lakh. At Rayerbazar, the same terms cost Tk10 lakh and Tk15 lakh, respectively.
The last supper
Even the burial does not necessarily mark the end of the expenses.
In many families, food is a big part of the funeral, prepared for relatives, neighbours and others who attend the program. The scale of the meal depends on the family's means and the number of people attending, making it difficult to put a fixed price on the tradition.
But feeding 50 people can itself run into tens of thousands of taka.
One current Dhaka caterer's prices suggest that a meal for 50 people can cost around Tk17,000 for bhuna khichuri, Tk19,000 for deshi polao, Tk20,000 for beef tehari and Tk46,250 for a kacchi-based meal. These figures are based on catering prices and do not represent a standard funeral-meal cost.
Families can also arrange individual dishes and quantities according to their budget rather than choosing a fixed per-person package.
The growing cost and complexity of funeral arrangements have also created a market for companies offering all the services under one package.
One such Dhaka-based funeral service provider says its standard package starts at Tk50,000 and covers basic funeral services and transportation. Its higher-end packages offer more extensive arrangements, including janazah-related services and food for guests.
Such services point to a broader change in how funerals are being organised in Dhaka. What was once largely handled through family members, neighbours and local networks can increasingly be outsourced — for a price.
And for families dealing with a death, convenience itself has become another expense.
For families with little savings, even a relatively modest funeral can be difficult to afford. There is no time to postpone the expense or wait for a better price. The money has to be found when it is needed, often within hours of a death.
In Dhaka, the cost of burial is not just about the price of a grave or a funeral service. It is also about how much a family can afford to spend at the moment it is least prepared to do so.
