NEW DELHI, Aug 23: An Indian woman threw herself on her husband’s funeral pyre, killing herself in line with an old Hindu custom that persists in rural pockets of India despite a nearly two-century ban on the practice, a newspaper reported on Wednesday.

The charred body of Janakrani Narayan, 45, was found on her husband’s pyre by neighbours in the village of Tulsipur in Madhya Pradesh, the newspaper quoted local residents and police as saying.

The villagers denied any knowledge of her intentions to commit sati, as the ritual suicide is known, and insisted they did not witness the act, committed on Monday.

“Nobody saw Janakrani onto the pyre and certainly nobody forced her,” village chief Bhagwan Singh Gaur told the paper. Villagers said that she had sneaked away after the funeral, saying she needed to use the bathroom. They only started to search for her after she had been missing for some time.

India has struggled in recent decades to put an end to sati.

While rare, the practice persists mainly in rural regions where widows are often shunned because of a belief they will bring bad luck and tragedy to the community.

Under Indian law, one can be sent to prison for life for pressing a woman to commit sati by promising financial or spiritual benefits to her family, or even simply standing aside as a woman throws herself on a funeral pyre.

The sati law came into effect in the wake of the 1987 immolation of Roop Kanwar, an 18-year-old girl who died on her husband’s funeral pyre in Rajasthan.

A national outcry ensued after newspapers reported that villagers had forced her into the flames.

After the latest sati, some 500 policemen moved into Tulsipur to investigate and make sure the act was not glorified.

A local government official, Shivshankar Shulka, told the Hindustan Times that Narayan’s death appeared to be a suicide, without outside involvement.

—AP