Bihar: Over 40 bodies of suspected Covid victims wash up on Ganga ghat in Buxar

Visuals of dozens of dead bodies floating in river Ganga in Bihar’s Buxar district have sent shockwaves across the country amid fears that these could be covid-related fatalities. The local administration claim that the corpses floated down from Uttar Pradesh and could be the bodies of Covid-19 patients who could not have been cremated due to lack of space at cremation sites.

“Some 40-45 bodies were seen floating,” NDTV reported quoting Chausa district official Ashok Kumar. He said the bodies seem to have been thrown into the river. According some accounts, the number of corpses could have been up to 100. Another official said the bodies are bloated and likely to have been dumped at least five to seven days back ruing the need to launch an investigation in the UP town.

” It is a matter of investigation to ascertain if these corpses come from Varanasi, Allahabad, or any other place. We are alerting officials near ghat areas to make sure that it does not happen again,” Buxar SDO, KK Upadhyay

Claiming the number of coprses to be not more than a dozen, Upadhyay said the local admistration is making arrangements to cremate the bodies.

“10-12 corpses that were seen in Ganga came floating from a distance. It seems these corpses were floating for the last 5-7 days. We don’t have a tradition of immersing bodies in rivers. We are making arrangements to cremate these corpses, he added

Also Read: 

‘Little room for judicial interference’: Centre turns down Supreme Court’s advice on Covid-19 vaccine pricing

Meanwhile, the locals fear that these covid bodies will be washed down further and can be eaten by stray dogs which will further spread coronavirus.

The latest incident balatntly exposes the scale of Covid crisis in the country and raises serious questions on the state’s Covid management. According to the state health department, 11,259 fresh cases were reported compared with the recent past when the number of people testing positive, on an average, stood between 13,000 and 15,000 on a daily basis. Meanwhile, India continues to suffer from worst healthcare crisis in decades. The country witnessed a single-day rise of 3,66,161 COVID-19 cases on Monday, which pushed its tally to 2,26,62,575, according to the health ministry.