Following catastrophic flash floods that left more than 1,200 dead and 5,000 missing across Nepal, grieving families are performing symbolic cremations using holy grass effigies. Meanwhile, overwhelmed authorities have begun mass temporary burials in places like the Chitwan and Kathmandu districts due to severe morgue shortages.
Sujan Achhami Performs Symbolic Cremations at Pashupatinath Temple
Nine days after his father, Dinesh, went missing, Sujan Achhami, 23, carries a body to the bank of the Bagmati River next to the famous Pashupatinath Temple in Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu. He lays the body on the Brahmanal – a stone on which corpses are placed for rituals. The priest reads mantras, directing Sujan to wash the body and offer a traditional clay lamp and flowers. Except it’s not a real body. Catastrophic flash floods swept through northern and central Nepal on August 26, killing more than 1,200 people and leaving almost 5,000 others missing. With hopes of finding them alive – or even dead – fading, grieving relatives are being forced to say goodbye without bodies. So, many are instead performing symbolic last rites using effigies made of sacred kusha grass.
We searched for them everywhere,
says Khim Bahadur Gharti Magar, whose uncle Tham Bahadur Pun, 71, a former British Army soldier, and aunt Chausara Pun, 64, were on a pilgrimage in northern Nepal when the flood hit. We couldn’t find them.
He has also performed these symbolic last rites for his missing relatives, right here on the bank of the Bagmati. There were 17 buses in the group they were with. During our search, we found four other people [dead bodies] who were part of the pilgrimage group. That’s why we decided to cremate,
Magar says. Sher Bahadur Pun, the deceased man’s son-in-law and a senior health official with the Nepal government, says the family has given DNA samples to police in the hope their identities might be traced later.
For Dinesh Achhami’s family, the search for the 41-year-old has been equally devastating. A driver from Barabishe municipality in northern Nepal, Achhami was in Rasuwa – the district hit worst by the floods – at the time the surging waters barrelled down from Tibet. We looked everywhere because we had no clear idea where he was hit,
says his uncle Raju Achhami. Maniram Tharu narrowly survived the flood while working at the Upper Trishuli 1 hydropower project. His 30-year-old brother Dipendra – also a hydropower worker who was employed in a different, downstream project – and sister-in-law Phool Maya Tamang, in her 40s, have been missing since the flood. We don’t know where to go, what to do. We are worried. They have small children who are safe because they are living with other family members.
Overwhelmed Morgues and Mass Temporary Burials
Families performed the cremation of the victims on Wednesday, a week after the devastating flash floods hit Nepal, using ‘kush’, a sacred grass, to make the effigy. Additionally, the Nepal Police and rescue team carried the bodies from Dhunche for burial beside a river on the outskirts of Kathmandu, as some bodies could not be identified. Earlier on Tuesday, mass burial began in the capital, Kathmandu, as well, after the morgue ran out of space after one week of the devastating flood in Nepal. Security forces donned in Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) carried the body bags and buried them in the Gorkarna forest area on the outskirts of Kathmandu. Amid the rainfall, the security personnel walking through the muddy forest carried the bodies and buried them with markers on top. The big bags contained the tags through which the bodies would be later exhumed and handed over to families after establishing the identities.
DNA of the buried bodies has already been kept for cross-matching with the family. As the bodies of the victims swept away by the Bhotekoshi flood are being dumped downstream, hospitals are struggling to find places to store and identify them. The Himalayan Nation only has a capacity of storing about 350 bodies in the morgues nationwide, which has led to a shortage of space to store the bodies until the family identifies and claims them. The remains of the victims swept by flood from Rasuwa and Nuwakot are being recovered in different parts of the nation. The district of Chitwan, a major low lying areas has collected the highest number, 321 bodies. The morgues there have already been filled with the bodies of the victims swept downstream, which has prompted authorities to set up temporary facilities. Authorities are managing the bodies under the Unidentified and Unclaimed Bodies Management Guidelines, 2021, under which a committee headed by the district police chief is responsible for managing the remains. With morgues running out of space, the government has engaged in managing unidentified bodies by amending the Unidentified and Unclaimed Body Management Guidelines, 2021.
International Forensic Teams Arrive to Accelerate DNA Identification
A large, yellow bulldozer is seen in footage shared by the Indian daily, The Hindu. It trundles into a hilly forest in the devastated district of Chitwan, scraping out red earth to create a trench to bury unclaimed flood victims. Officials hope this will be a temporary resting place because Nepalese, who are mostly Hindu, cremate their loved ones, but they’re being buried because the morgues were too full. Officials have logged DNA into a database, bearing each corpse with a tag visible above the ground to identify the dead in case their DNA can be matched with a living relative. The police say more than 560 relatives of the missing have offered their DNA samples. Anil Thapa, an inspector with the Chitwan Police, told the Associated Press:
Then if DNA matches, we can extract the dead bodies from the ground.
Anil Thapa, Chitwan Police inspector
Nepal’s police say on X, they’ve temporarily buried more than 880 bodies. Other nations are helping extract and process the DNA, says a spokesman for Nepal’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Lok Bahadur Poudel Chhetri:
The 19-member forensic team from India. A five-member specialized forensic team from China arrived yesterday. The Disaster Victim Identification team of six individuals from Singapore has just arrived.
Lok Bahadur Poudel Chhetri, Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman
Spokesman Lok Bahadur Poudel Chhetri added that An additional Korean forensic team has also joined the works.
He says Nepal has requested more equipment to facilitate this grim task, including more bags for human remains. Meanwhile, a 19-member Indian forensic team began analysing DNA samples alongside forensic experts to assist in identifying people affected by the recent flash floods in Nepal, the Indian Embassy stated. The team commenced the analysis at the Nepal Police Central Forensic Science Laboratory and the National Forensic Science Laboratory in the Khumaltar area of Kathmandu Valley. The Indian experts are working with their counterparts to speed up the processing of DNA samples collected from the affected areas.
Chitwan District Bears the Heaviest Toll
As some families have given up hope of finding their loved ones, in Kathmandu, by the river of the revered Pashupatinath Temple, a Hindu priest blows on a conch shell, a funeral rite to ward off evil. Mourners create effigies of the dead, stick figures made from bundles of holy kusha grass. They’re bound in yellow cloth inscribed with the name of the Hindu god Ram. One family lines up six of them, piled onto pyres with straw and garlanded with marigolds, while grieving male relatives with freshly shaven heads continue their solemn farewells.
