Swelling Ganges opens up India's riverside graves

Gulf Today Report

More corpses are washing up on the banks of the Ganges in India's most populous state of Uttar Pradesh as seasonal flooding is flushing out shallow graves and expose bodies buried in riverside.

The rain has exposed some of the hundreds of bodies that were buried by the river during India's recent Covid-19 surge.

According to the local media reports videos and pictures in May of bodies drifting down the river, which Hindus consider holy, shocked the nation and underlined the ferocity of the world's biggest surge in infections.

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Neeraj Kumar Singh, an official in the northern city of Allahabad, said that almost 150 bodies have had to be cremated in the past three weeks, he was speaking to the media reporters.

"We are not exhuming any bodies but only those which are floating up due to rising water levels are being cremated," he said.

A municipal worker walks past shallow sand graves on the Ganges riverbank in Phaphamau on Friday. Reuters

"The area is spread over a kilometre (half a mile) and our guess is there are around 500-600 bodies buried," Singh.

Though cases have come down drastically this month, the Uttar Pradesh city of Prayagraj alone has cremated 108 bodies found in the river in the last three weeks, said a senior municipal official.

"These are those dead bodies which were buried very close to the river and have gone into it with the rise in its water levels," Neeraj Kumar Singh adds.