**A devout Hindu has won his bid for the right to be cremated on a traditional open-air funeral pyre.**Davender Ghai, 71, was seeking to overturn a 2006 Newcastle City Council decision forbidding him from being cremated according to his beliefs.
Last year his challenge was dismissed by the High Court, but that ruling has been overturned at the Court of Appeal.
Judges ruled the pyre would be lawful after Mr Ghai said it could include walls and a roof with an opening.
In February 2006, the founder of the Anglo-Asian Friendship Society (AAFS), from Gosforth, Newcastle, was refused a permit for an open-air cremation site in a remote part of Northumberland.
Newcastle City Council said the burning of human remains anywhere outside a crematorium was prohibited under the 1902 Cremation Act.
The Ministry of Justice, which opposed the appeal case, had backed the local authority’s decision.
Mr Ghai said he had only wanted to clarify and enforce the law, not disrespect it.