Jakarta, CNN Indonesia —
Seasonal floods that hit Ganges River, India joined in sweeping the shallow depths of graves that line its shores, where hundreds of bodies were buried on the banks of rivers during the recent Covid-19 wave in India.
Neeraj Kumar Singh, an official in the northern city of Allahabad, said that nearly 150 bodies there had to be cremated in the past three weeks.
“Only bodies found floating were cremated,” he said.
“The area is spread out for more than a kilometer, we estimate there are around 500-600 bodies buried there,” Singh said, as quoted by Reuters. AFP on Sunday (27/6).
“Every precaution was taken in handling the corpses while performing the final rites for them.”
Most of the bodies are believed to have died from the coronavirus storm that struck in April and May, when India was hit by a spike in infections that flooded hospitals in many areas.
Some families cannot afford firewood for traditional Hindu cremations, so the bodies are buried in the Ganges River or buried in sandbars adjacent to the river.
The area is currently experiencing flooding due to the annual monsoon rains that inundate rivers, washing away sand and revealing bodies buried at shallow depths.
The number of shallow graves has sparked suspicions that India’s total death toll from the pandemic may be more than 1 million, several times the official figure of nearly 400,000.
(AFP / ard)
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