MUSLIM graves in Manchester have collapsed so badly that caskets and even bodies have been exposed to grieving relatives.

The city council has been slammed for allowing a special section of Southern Cemetery reserved for Islamic burials to become dangerously full of holes and weed-ridden.

Local Government Ombudsman Patricia Thomas said people who complained had been given sand to fill in the holes.

The town hall has already agreed to pay £500 to one woman who repeatedly discovered the graves of her loved ones had caved in and twice found holes so deep she could see down to the coffin.

The council denied the graveyard was unsafe and blamed the specific nature of Muslim burials for subsidence and problems with maintenance.

But Khalid Anees, Manchester president of the Islamic Society of Britain, said: "This needs to be taken further. The council needs to account for what it has done and it does sound like there has been some neglect."

In Islamic burials, space is left above the body, either by using a deep casket or by putting a timber platform above the deceased. Over time the caskets disintegrate and soil falls into the vacuum.

A council officer reported in December 1998 that graves were collapsing and in some cases bodies had been exposed.

Mrs Thomas decided to investigate after a request from a member of the public, who lives abroad and who said the state of the graveyard had been "painful and distressing".

Overgrown

Mrs Thomas sent an officer to visit the site earlier this year and discovered the Muslim section was "extremely overgrown with tall weeds, long grass and a general air of neglect".

There was also little space between the graves despite Islam forbidding people from walking over dead bodies.

Mrs Thomas, who found the council guilty of maladministration with injustice, said in a report: "The basic issues seem to be to be twofold: that the cemetery is in a dangerous condition and that the lack of maintenance is not acceptable.

"It must be bewildering for Muslims to look at the weeds and unkempt grass in their cemetery and compare it with the carefully trimmed lawns in the adjacent general area.

"I am concerned that the council seems to have relied to some extent upon individuals filling in holes in graves when this seems to me to be entirely the council's responsibility."

The council says it set money aside money for a new Muslim cemetery in 1998 but has yet to reach agreement to use it with religious leaders.

Paul Murphy, the executive member for direct services, said: "I don't accept things are currently not safe. Where there have been collapses we have responded.

"We want to keep all parts of the cemetery to the same standard and need to open negotiations with the imams.

"We want to come to an agreement not to leave such a gap between the body and the excavation because the consequence is the graves collapse."

Coun Murphy said the reason the grass was cut less often than in other parts of Southern Cemetery was due to problems of access and the need to respect the importance to Islam of not walking over bodies.

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