The open-air burning of human corpses may be permitted across Britain after a religious charity won a significant victory in its campaign to legalise traditional Hindu funerals.

An attempt to establish the first approved site for the 4,000-year-old spiritual ceremony in northeast England was blocked last year after a local authority ruled that it would breach cremation laws.

The decision was challenged by Davender Kumar Ghai, a 68-year-old devout Hindu who is in poor health and is demanding the right, when he dies, to be cremated on an open-air pyre.

A High Court judge has now approved his bid to seek a judicial review of Newcastle City Council’s refusal to permit a funeral rite that Hindus regard as essential for the successful liberation of the soul.

Mr Justice Collins ruled that it was in the public interest to allow the application because the issue was “of some considerable importance to the Hindu community”. He also noted that rulings in 1884 and 1907 “may mean that the burning of dead bodies in the open air is not necessarily unlawful”.

Britain has 559,000 Hindus and many are expected to opt for an open-air cremation if such ceremonies are approved.

Mr Ghai, the founder and president of the Anglo-Asian Friendship Society, created headlines last July when he arranged the first human funeral pyre in Britain since the Home Office authorised the outdoor cremation of Sumshere Jung, a Nepalese princess and the wife of the Napalese ambassador, in Woking in 1934.

The body of Rajpal Mehat, a 31-year-old Indian illegal immigrant found drowned in a London canal, was burnt on a wooden pyre at a secret location in rural Northumberland.

Newcastle council had ruled that the ceremony was illegal under the Cremation Act 1902.

Police investigated the incident and passed a file to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). It ruled that an offence had been committed but that prosecution would not be in the public interest.

No date has yet been set for the judicial review application, which will be led by specialist human rights barristers Ramby de Mello and Tony Muman.

They argue that open-air pyres fall outside the 1902 Act, which regulates what happens inside a crematorium, defined as “any building fitted with appliances for the purpose of burning human remains”.

The burning of a human body in the open air, they say, is an offence only if it causes a public nuisance, which would be avoided because the sites would be in secluded locations.

If the High Court disagrees, then Mr Ghai’s case will be pursued on a human rights basis.

“Only if the law is made clear in favour of pyres can I incorporate a clause into my will that would complete a lifetime spiritual journey as a proud and active British Hindu,” he said.

Mr Ghai, who has a Unesco gold medal for peacekeeping and an Amnesty International Lifetime Achievement Award, said that thoughout his life he had aspired to a “meditative acceptance of mortality”.

His mind, however, has become “increasingly consumed with dread” at the prospect of a local authority cremation.

“Hindus are Britain’s third largest faith group. We have proved to be a model migrant community and we feel hurt that other groups are allowed to undertake their funeral rites while we are left out. It is time for that to change,” he said.

Burning issue

1874 Sir Henry Thompson founds the Cremation Society of England. John Everett Millais and Anthony Trollope are members

1884 William Price, 83, goes on trial for trying to burn his baby son’s body at his farm near Cardiff. The judge rules that cremation is not an offence unless it causes a public nuisance

1901 First municipal crematorium opens in Hull

1902 Act of Parliament to regulate crematoria

2005 David Wrigglesworth is convicted of collecting his mother’s pension after her death — but not of burning her body in his garden. One neighbour’s complaint did not equal “public nuisance”

Sources: Cremation Society, Anglo-Asian Friendship Society