Via BBC News: India's holiest river Ganges is swollen with Covid victims. Excerpt:
The horror in Uttar Pradesh first came to light on 10 May when 71 corpses washed up on the river bank in Bihar's Chausa village, near the state border.
Neeraj Kumar Singh, superintendent of police for Buxar, where Chausa is located, told the BBC that autopsies were carried out on the mostly decomposed bodies, DNA samples were taken, and the bodies buried in pits near the river bank.
Officials said some of the remains could be body parts which had found their way into the Ganges after routine cremations on the banks, but they suspected the corpses had been dumped in the river. The police installed a net across the water to catch any more.
A day later, six miles (10km) from Chausa, dozens of heavily decomposed bodies were found strewn on the river bank in Gahmar village in Uttar Pradesh's Ghazipur district, with feral dogs and crows feasting on them.
Local people said the bodies had been washing up on embankments for several days, but authorities had ignored their complaints about the stench until the news about the corpses found downstream in Bihar hit the headlines.
Dozens of bloated and decomposed bodies floating in the river also greeted villagers in the neighbouring Ballia district when they went for their morning dip in India's most sacred river. The Hindustan newspaper reported that police retrieved 62 corpses.
In Kannauj, Kanpur, Unnao, and Prayagraj, the river bed is dotted with shallow graves. Videos sent to the BBC from the Mehndi ghat embankment in Kannauj show scores of human-sized mounds. Many look just like a bump in the river bed, but each one hides a body. At the nearby Mahadevi ghat, at least 50 bodies were found.
A 'massive' discrepancy in the death toll
Traditionally, Hindus cremate their dead. But many communities follow what is known as "Jal Pravah" - the practice of floating in the river the bodies of children, unwed girls, or those who die from infectious diseases or snake bites.
Many poor people also cannot afford cremation, and so they wrap the body in white muslin and push it into the water. Sometimes, the bodies are tied to stones to ensure they remain submerged, but as many are floated without weights. In normal times, corpses floating in the Ganges are not an uncommon sight.
What is rare is that so many are turning up in such a short time, and in so many places along the river bank. A journalist in Kanpur told the BBC the corpses were evidence of a "massive discrepancy between the official Covid-19 death figures and the actual numbers on the ground".
He said officially 196 people had died from the virus in Kanpur between 16 April and 5 May, but the data from seven crematoriums showed nearly 8,000 cremations.
"All electric crematoriums were running 24/7 in April. Even that was not enough, so the administration allowed the grounds outside to be used for cremations using wood," he said.
