Published : 23 Aug 2026, 07:16 AM
Updated : 08 Sep 2026, 09:35 AM
Prices for Peace, Penalty for Poverty
High cost of forever: Preserving a grave in Dhaka costs up to Tk 150 million, turning permanence into an elite luxury
Space shortages, unequal terms: City policy inflates fees to deter long-term bookings, pricing ordinary families out of memory
Fading traces, shared graves: Unpreserved plots face reuse within two years, erasing final physical traces for the less wealthy
In Dhaka, even death does not quite erase the inequalities of life.
Where a person is buried -- and how long that grave remains -- depends not only on family wishes or religious custom, but increasingly on what they can afford to pay.
In the capital’s two city corporations, a grave can be ordinary, temporary and eventually reused, or preserved for years at a price running into millions of taka.
For a family seeking to keep a loved one’s grave for 25 years, the bill ranges from Tk 2 million under Dhaka South City Corporation to as much as Tk 150 million at Banani Graveyard under Dhaka North City Corporation.
The city authorities say the high fees are intended partly to discourage long-term preservation because burial land is finite. If everyone sought permanent graves in Dhaka, they argue, there would simply be nowhere left for the next generation.
But the policy has created another reality: preserving the final physical trace of a loved one has become, to a significant extent, a question of financial means.
A Price List for Permanence
Under DNCC’s 2022 cemetery management policy, graves can be preserved for 15 or 25 years.
Banani charges Tk 100 million for 15 years and Tk 150 million for 25 years.
At Uttara Sector 4, the fees are Tk 7.5 million and Tk 10 million respectively. Sector 12 charges Tk 5 million and Tk 7.5 million, while Sector 14 charges Tk 3 million and Tk 5 million.
At Mirpur Shahid Buddhijibi Cemetery, the rates are Tk 2 million and Tk 3 million; at Rayerbazar, they are Tk 1 million and Tk 1.5 million.
Under DSCC, Azimpur, Jurain and Khilgaon cemeteries offer preservation for 10, 15, 20 or 25 years, costing Tk 500,000, Tk 1 million, Tk 1.5 million and Tk 2 million respectively.
Ordinary graves, meanwhile, are generally reused after a designated period. A DSCC official said the standard period is two years, though the reality can be less predictable.
“After two years, we make the graves chala [sloped]. But in many cases, we see that after some graves are made, relatives no longer come to check on them, or in many cases there are no relatives left to do so.
“Those graves are sometimes mistakenly made ‘chala’ earlier. Perhaps after one year, or in some cases even after six months.”
When Grief Meets Affordability
For many Dhaka residents, the shortage of land is understandable. What troubles them is the price attached to preserving a memory.
Malibagh resident Nazrul Islam said, “Space is limited, we understand that. If everyone in Dhaka wants permanent graves, there will be no space to bury new people.
“But the city corporation should have had a system that allowed ordinary people to preserve the memory of their loved ones’ graves for at least some more time.”
Shahadullah Jilani called the fees discriminatory.
“For families who have this much money for preserving a grave, perhaps it is not a problem. But even Tk 500,000 is a huge amount for a lower-middle-class family. Does emotion really understand the arithmetic of financial means?”
For Baridhara resident Farhan Siam, the answer lies outside Dhaka. When his grandmother died, the family took her body to their ancestral home in Bogura.
“She was buried in our family cemetery. That grave will never disappear. Yet even if we spent millions of taka in Dhaka, we would not have been able to preserve it for more than 10 to 20 years.”
What Does Islam Say?
Islamic Foundation researcher and Hadith scholar Dr Waliur Rahman Khan says Islam requires burial but permits another burial in the same place after a reasonable period, depending on the condition of the soil and remains.
“Because there is no unlimited space in the world for burial. In regions such as Arabia, where the soil is rocky or sandy, it is also customary to bury multiple people successively in the same place.”
He said charging fees to cover land, management and related costs is permissible.
Preserving a grave is also not inherently prohibited, he said, but ostentation could change the religious character of the practice.
“If preserving a grave is done only to display aristocracy, then it can be a cause of sin.
“And if preservation is done so that future generations will see it, pray for their grandparents and remember them, if it is done with good intentions, for the purpose of earning reward, then it will be considered differently.”
A Planning Failure with a Price Tag
Urban planner Adil Muhammad Khan says Dhaka’s burial crisis is ultimately rooted in the city’s failure to reserve enough land as it expanded.
“The city has grown, but we have not designated land for cemeteries at the same rate. The few cemeteries the government has are far too small compared with the number of deaths.”
With supply so limited, he says the economics of demand and supply have entered even the most intimate space of mourning.
“There are people willing to pay millions of taka for a grave in Banani. As a result, the spiritual appeal has now moved into the realm of demand and supply. That creates, and will create, inequality.”
DNCC Chief Social Welfare and Slum Development Officer Mohammad Mamun-ul-Hasan said the high fees are deliberate.
“Our burial space in Dhaka cannot be expanded, but the population keeps growing. So one of the main purposes of raising preservation fees is to discourage people from keeping graves preserved for such long periods.”
DSCC says it faces an even tighter squeeze. Its 59 acres (nearly 24 hectares) of cemetery land are far less than the 192 acres (nearly 78 hectares) available under DNCC, while more than half of the southern area is already preserved under various terms.
A Grave Shouldn’t Become a Status Symbol
Adil argues that Dhaka’s solution should not be a system where money determines who gets permanence.
“Money should not be the only rule. If the rule is that nobody can make a grave permanent in a cemetery, then it should apply to everyone.
“There should not be anything different for the lower-income and upper-income when burying someone in Dhaka. Inequality can be reduced that way, so that the space is not made permanent for anyone.”
Perhaps, he suggests, the city must learn to accept what death has always demanded: that even graves, eventually, must make room for the living.
“Let us embrace the broader spirit of Islam and accept this reality. Surely our prayers reach them; they are in the cemetery, and that is what matters.”
