Uttarakhand floods: Identifying the dead proving to be a daunting task

After saving most of those who survived the Uttarakhand floods, authorities are facing a daunting task in establishing identities of hundreds of bodies by way of photographs and DNA samples before consigning them to mass cremations.

The few photographs of the dead that have been put online by the Uttarakhand government are hardly even a fraction of the victims and in many cases features have been disfigured beyond recognition.

There is every possibility that the kin of the dead will have to deal with a statistic as they may not be able to make an identification. DNA tests may not prove fully reliable as genetic material is also subject to decomposition.

Having concentrated in rescuing the living, authorities have not been able to pay much attention to bodies, many of which lay in the open or floated down the Ganga to be fished out in Haridwar or further downstream.

June 28 will mark the thirteenth day since the disaster, usually a significant date in terms of Hindu rituals performed after death. As many bodies will remain unidentified at the time of cremation, the government is likely to wait for a month before declaring a missing person as deceased.

The authorities are also banking on the pictures uploaded by relatives of missing persons on the websites of the state government, but matching these photographs with the ones in their possession seems equally difficult.

Though the state authorities have already started uploading certain basic details of the victims, officials believe that it is only a scientific-forensic test that will identify bodies.

In an interview to the TOI on Monday, Uttarakhand chief minister Vijay Bahuguna had said that 'tehsildars' will issue death certificates after a month. "If a person doesn't return in 30 days, the government will immediately release the compensation and not go by rules which state that you have to wait for seven years," he had told TOI.

An official said, "Team of medical staff has already collected DNA samples of most of the bodies. These samples will be preserved till the time their identities are established through matching it with the relatives. The local police have also finished the process of chronicling the details from legal point of view".

The Uttarakhand government has, meanwhile, put up a message board on the websites, asking relatives of the missing persons to provide them whatever information they can provide to trace them. The latest report put the figure of missing persons at 344.

The relatives of the victims had initially reported the missing complaints in thousands with Kedarnath - epicenter of devastation -- topping the list with 1,021 missing persons. Since the majority of them have already been traced, the total number now rests at 344.

"344 people are still missing. There are indications that the death toll may go up," said the NDMA vice chairman M Shashidhar Reddy, adding the rescue operation will, hopefully, be completed within a couple of days.

Reddy said efforts were being made to evacuate bodies under the debris - which are eight to ten feet high - in Kedarnath.

Thursday 27 June 2013

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