A "Cheel Ghar" in Hindi or "Tower of Silence" in English, is a circular, raised structure used by Zoroastrians for disposal of the dead.
Zoroastrian tradition considers a dead body to be unclean. The corpse demon (nasu daeva) was believed to rush into the body and contaminate everything it came into contact with. To prevent this the bodies of the dead are placed atop a tower—a tower of silence—and exposed to the sun and to scavenging birds.
The bodies of men are arranged around the outer ring, women in the second circle, and children in the innermost ring. Once the bones have been bleached by the sun and wind, which can take as long as a year, they are collected in an ossuary pit at the center of the tower, where they gradually disintegrate, and the remaining material—with run-off rainwater—runs through multiple coal and sand filters before being eventually washed out to sea.