NEW DELHI, May 12: After Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, it was the turn of Madhya Pradesh discovering human bodies floating in the river. Around half a dozen bodies have been found floating in a river in Panna district in MP triggering panic among the villagers.
The officials, however, were surprisingly not unduly worried. The Panna district collector Sanjay Kumar Mishra said two bodies of people from neighbouring villages, who died of cancer, were found floating. “There is a tradition of disposing of bodies in the river. Usually, the villagers go to dispose of bodies in Ken River but due to lockdown, they disposed of the bodies in the local river. We retrieved the two bodies and buried them. Now, we are checking whether there are more bodies in the river or not.”
After dozens of corpses were found in the Ganga in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, the Panna residents, however, were concerned over the situation. Residents said bodies were floating in the river in Panna for four days, but the matter came to light on Tuesday after a video of the corpses went viral on social media. “The decomposed bodies can be seen easily in the river. We do not know whether the bodies belong to Covid-19 infected people or not, but this is for the first time we have seen floating bodies in this river. We are not allowing kids to come out of houses as we are afraid of the spread of the disease in the village,” a Panna resident said.
The villagers said they use the river water for drinking and cooking. “Now, it is impossible for us to use the water of the river. The administration should clean the river.”
At least 70 corpses were fished out of the Ganga in Bihar’s Buxar district on Tuesday. In neighbouring Uttar Pradesh’s Ghazipur, residents spotted 12 bodies floating in the river upstream. Both states have ordered probes into the recovery of bodies amid speculation that they belonged to Covid patients. The authorities have also spread nets across Ganga to catch the bodies floating in the river.
(Manas Dasgupta)