Sheila Shanley, 74, lives in the heritage town of Trim in County Meath, North Ireland. Her grand uncle, a British soldier who died 108 years ago, rested at what is now known as the Church of South India (CSI) Cemetery in Trimulgherry, a buzzing locality in Telangana’s Secunderabad.
Shanley, living thousands of miles away, has spent over four decades tirelessly searching online for any trace of her grandmother’s brother, Rifleman Michael Joseph Leonard, but his final resting place remained elusive.
Hope rekindled when Shanley stumbled upon a news feature titled ‘Resting with Dignity a Century On’, published in The Hindu on December 16, 2019. The feature highlighted the 94 graves of British soldiers and officers, all commemorated in the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.
Among them, Michael, who passed away on May 1, 1915, found his eternal abode in Cemetery No. 12 at Trimulgherry. Shanley, who came across the feature online in October this year, clung to these bare details and yearned for at least a photograph of the grave.
She sent an email to the reporter, Ravi Reddy, The Hindu’s Telangana Resident Editor. It sparked a concerted effort to pinpoint the exact resting place of Michael within the cemetery.
With Wilfred Bill Clinton and a middle-aged mason, Narasimha, the search party, armed with two big sticks, make their way through a dense thicket, mindful of potential encounters with snakes and other creepy-crawlies, to identify the grave.
This, is their story.
Read more: Significance of the colonial-era cemetery in Secunderabad
Report, script and presentation: Ravi Reddy
Videography: Nagara Gopal
Production: Shikha Kumari
