Bodies dumped in Ganges as 2nd wave overwhelms India

NEW DELHI • Bodies of Covid-19 victims have been found in some Indian rivers, a state government official said in a letter seen by Reuters, the first official acknowledgement of an alarming practice that it said may stem from poverty and fear of the disease in villages.

Images of corpses drifting down the Ganges, which Hindus consider to be a holy river, have shocked a nation reeling under the world's worst surge in infections.

Although the media has linked the recent increase in the numbers of such bodies to the pandemic, the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, home to 240 million people, has until now not publicly revealed the cause of the deaths.

"The administration has information that bodies of those who have succumbed to Covid-19 or any other disease are being thrown into rivers instead of being disposed of as per proper rituals," a senior state official, Mr Manoj Kumar Singh, said in a letter last Friday to district heads that was reviewed by Reuters. "As a result, bodies have been recovered from rivers in many places."

Mr Singh confirmed the letter to Reuters, but said autopsies on four to five bodies in the state's district of Ghazipur had not revealed virus infection. "The bodies are decomposed, so I am not sure in this state it can be found out about corona positive," he said in a text message.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged officials last Saturday to beef up rural healthcare resources and boost surveillance amid the rapid spread of the virus in those areas, after ravaging cities.

Uttar Pradesh, which is home to more people than Brazil or Pakistan, has been badly hit by India's dramatic second surge of Covid-19. Health experts say many cases are going undetected in the state's villages, where the majority of its people live.

In the memo, Mr Singh said a lack of funds for materials such as firewood for cremation, religious beliefs in some communities, and families abandoning victims for fear of the disease were among the likely reasons for the surge in body dumping.

He asked village-level officials to ensure no corpses were thrown into rivers and said the state government would pay poor families 5,000 rupees (S$91) each to cremate or bury the bodies of their dead.

The state has also asked police to patrol rivers to stop the practice.

India reported a smaller rise in daily coronavirus infections for a third straight day yesterday, as the government said it was working to boost vaccine supplies to avert deaths beyond the pandemic toll of more than 270,000.

The number of deaths in a 24-hour period rose beyond 4,000 for the fourth time in a week - with 4,077 more fatalities - while yesterday's 311,170 new infections represented the lowest single-day rise in more than three weeks.

Across India's small towns and villages, local-language newspapers are revealing that thousands more are probably dying of the coronavirus each day than government data shows.

Dainik Bhaskar, a Hindi newspaper popular across India's crowded heartland, sent 30 of its reporters out along the banks of the Ganges in Uttar Pradesh state.

They found - and photographed - more than 2,000 corpses across some 1,140km. This, when the state government claims that only about 300 are dying daily.

Their findings make for grim reading: the authorities are piling silt over more than 350 bodies lying in shallow graves in Kannauj, the reporters say; they see dogs gnawing at some of the 400 corpses just a short distance from a crematorium in Kanpur; they count 52 corpses floating down the river in Ghazipur, often crossing state borders.

"The revered river probably wants us to share her grief," the report read. "That's why, the bodies that are sought to be hidden, our Holy Mother Ganga has unearthed."

Meanwhile, in Mr Modi's home state of Gujarat, the Divya Bhaskar newspaper found that 123,000 death certificates were issued between March 1 and May 10 - about 65,000 more than the same period last year - though the state reported 4,218 Covid-19 deaths.

The Gujarat Samachar reported that an average of 200 bodies are being cremated daily using 72 tonnes of wood in Vadodara, compared with an average 60 corpses using 21.6 tonnes of wood before the pandemic.

The work of photojournalists like Mr Arun Sharma has also gone viral as Indians grapple with the yawning gap between what the authorities say and what the cameras reveal.

REUTERS, BLOOMBERG