A devastated 24-year-old in Tamil Nadu, India married his deceased girlfriend at her funeral and pledged to stay single for the rest of his life.
According to local news reports, the man and his girlfriend were in a relationship for years and were planning to get married when the young woman suddenly died in a fatal bus crash.
In a video that is going viral online, the young man can be seen carrying out the marriage rituals, as per Hindu traditions, as dozens of others mourn the death of his deceased bride around them.
The video shows the distraught man applying the vermillion turmeric powder – or kungumam – on the girl’s forehead and hairline – a practice that typically signals that a woman is married – as his deceased bride’s grief-stricken mother weeps nearby: