On Wednesday, 19 bodies were discovered washed up on the banks of the Sarayu River in Pithoragarh, Uttarakhand, evoking shock, anger, and concern among the locals.
Locals fear that the water will be contaminated, leading to a rapid spread of the COVID-19 disease. The district headquarters, which gets its drinking water from the river, is only 30 kilometres from where the corpses were seen floating.
Many people are worried about COVID-19 spreading because cases reached an all-time high earlier this month.
Locals have also expressed concerns about cremating the bodies of Covid victims in open areas, fearing that the disease will spread further.
The bodies flowing into the Saryu river are not from Pithoragarh, according to Pankaj Chandola, the district tehsildar who is supervising the cremation of COVID patients in the Ghat area.
“The area in which the corpses were floating is not from Pithoragarh . They have not yet been identified and investigation is being carried out from where the bodies came from,” Chandola said.
Similar scenes were witnessed earlier this month in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, where bodies were found floating in the river Ganga.
Meanwhile, the Centre has asked Uttar Pradesh and Bihar to prevent the dumping of dead bodies in the Ganga and its tributaries, calling media reports of bodies of COVID-19 victims being dumped in the rivers “undesirable and alarming”.
