The floating corpses have a message for an aspirational nation
During a recent conversation, a colleague who hails from a small village in Uttar Pradesh said five people had died just the previous day in his village. And 14 over one month. Every household seemed to have someone who was sick. There was no testing facility, no hospital nearby, no medicines, no oxygen, no vaccines. Only deaths, and the dying. And how was he sure that those deaths were related to Covid if there was no testing? Because of the same symptoms. And because the rate at which people were dying was much higher than before the pandemic. Almost surely these were not being attributed or counted as Covid deaths by the authorities. And, he added, that timing of the deaths could be attributed to village panchayat elections.
Such anecdotal evidence coming from across the state suddenly crystalised in the form of floating bodies on the holy river Ganga. First there were some stray sightings, then some bodies surfaced from the shallow, sandy graves of the river bank. These seem to have been hastily buried or dumped at night. And now there seems to be a flood of evidence. Reporters of Dainik Bhaskar fanned out across all the 27 districts of UP through which the river flows, and filed ground reports from various places such as Bijnor, Kanpur, Kannauj, Unnao, Prayagraj , Ghazipur and Ballia. The river flows for 1,140 km within the state before entering the state of Bihar at Buxar. What they found was both shocking and numbing. They counted at least 2,000 bodies at various “ghats” - some wrapped in PPE kits had been either dumped into the river, or buried in the sandy banks. Who knows how long ago these deaths occurred, or where these bodies came from. At some places the bodies were half eaten by stray dogs or vultures. Near Ghazipur, when questioned, one local MLA said that bodies washing ashore was a “normal phenomenon”. And that in any case, bodies were usually dumped in Prayagraj as per custom, and these had simply drifted downstream towards Ghazipur.
During a recent conversation, a colleague who hails from a small village in Uttar Pradesh said five people had died just the previous day in his village. And 14 over one month. Every household seemed to have someone who was sick. There was no testing facility, no hospital nearby, no medicines, no oxygen, no vaccines. Only deaths, and the dying. And how was he sure that those deaths were related to Covid if there was no testing? Because of the same symptoms. And because the rate at which people were dying was much higher than before the pandemic. Almost surely these were not being attributed or counted as Covid deaths by the authorities. And, he added, that timing of the deaths could be attributed to village panchayat elections.
Such anecdotal evidence coming from across the state suddenly crystalised in the form of floating bodies on the holy river Ganga. First there were some stray sightings, then some bodies surfaced from the shallow, sandy graves of the river bank. These seem to have been hastily buried or dumped at night. And now there seems to be a flood of evidence. Reporters of Dainik Bhaskar fanned out across all the 27 districts of UP through which the river flows, and filed ground reports from various places such as Bijnor, Kanpur, Kannauj, Unnao, Prayagraj , Ghazipur and Ballia. The river flows for 1,140 km within the state before entering the state of Bihar at Buxar. What they found was both shocking and numbing. They counted at least 2,000 bodies at various “ghats” - some wrapped in PPE kits had been either dumped into the river, or buried in the sandy banks. Who knows how long ago these deaths occurred, or where these bodies came from. At some places the bodies were half eaten by stray dogs or vultures. Near Ghazipur, when questioned, one local MLA said that bodies washing ashore was a “normal phenomenon”. And that in any case, bodies were usually dumped in Prayagraj as per custom, and these had simply drifted downstream towards Ghazipur.
