KATHMANDU, Sept 11: The number of relatives visiting Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital (TUTH) to search for family members missing in the Bhotekoshi floods has dropped by around 50 percent over the past week as severely decomposed bodies make visual identification increasingly difficult.
Until a week ago, the Forensic Department of TUTH was crowded with relatives searching for their missing family members. However, police personnel involved in body management said the number of people visiting the department has declined sharply in recent days.
Superintendent of Police (SP) Pradip Singh, deployed at the hospital’s Forensic Department, said fewer relatives have been coming as the chances of finding bodies that can be physically identified have also diminished.
“There are fewer people coming to search, and even when bodies are found, they are often difficult to identify,” Singh said.
The Department premises had hardly any relatives searching for missing family members on Wednesday, while only a few people were seen checking the bodies kept outside the department.
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Additional bodies were brought to the hospital on Wednesday. DIG Om Bahadur Rana, coordinator of body management at the department and a senior official at the Nepal Police Headquarters, said the identification and management of bodies would continue until all the bodies are managed.
According to Rana, most of the bodies recovered in recent days are in a severely decomposed or damaged condition. As a result, relatives are increasingly turning to DNA testing instead of physical identification. “The bodies have decomposed and the faces have been completely destroyed, making it impossible to identify them,” Rana said.
Police said many families have also started performing collective funerals by preparing symbolic bodies using kusha grass after failing to find or identify their missing relatives.
A woman who was at TUTH said seven people from Solukhumbu who went missing in Rasuwa were cremated collectively after their bodies could not be found despite extensive searches.
Singh said the number of people coming to search for missing bodies has dropped sharply because bodies are either not being recovered or cannot be identified even when they are found. “It appears that relatives have stopped coming after failing to find their family members,” he said.
Singh said DNA samples were collected from 60 bodies recently recovered in Nuwakot before the bodies were managed there.
According to police, bodies recovered in recent days are no longer in a condition suitable for visual identification. DNA samples are therefore being collected in the respective districts before the bodies are managed. Such procedures are being carried out in Nuwakot, Dhading, Chitwan, Rasuwa and Kathmandu.
As of Wednesday, a total of 298 bodies had been received at TUTH, of which 231 had been managed. Twenty-four identified bodies had been handed over to their relatives. Postmortems had been conducted on 294 of the total bodies, while 55 bodies were being kept at the hospital.
Five additional bodies were brought to TUTH from Nuwakot on Tuesday.
According to data released by Nepal Police on Wednesday, 4,077 people remain missing so far. A total of 1,367 bodies have been recovered, of which 102 have been handed over to relatives. A total of 1,167 bodies have been managed.
DNA samples have been collected from 1,268 deceased people, while 1,412 relatives have provided samples for DNA matching.
Police Sub-Inspector Rana said blood samples from relatives and bone or tooth samples from the bodies are being collected for DNA testing at the Forensic Department.
He said that once a DNA match is established, bodies currently stored in forests or other locations can later be retrieved and identified.
