Bodies of COVID-19 victims among those dumped in Ganga, reveals government document
Bodies of COVID-19 victims have been found dumped in some Indian rivers, a state government said in a letter seen by Reuters, the first official acknowledgement of an alarming practice it said may stem from poverty and fear of the disease in villages.
Images of corpses drifting down the Ganges river, which Hindus consider holy, have shocked a nation reeling under the world`s worst surge in infections.
Although media have 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, Manoj Kumar Singh, said in a May 14 letter to district heads that was reviewed by Reuters.
“As a result, bodies have been recovered from rivers in many places.”
Singh confirmed the letter to Reuters but said autopsies on four to five bodies in the state`s disrict of Ghazipur had not revealed virus infection.
