(From left) Lalmani Acharya, Khima Budha Magar and Govinda Pangeni search for their missing relatives at the provincial hospital in Butwal.
BUTWAL: Govinda Pangeni of Suddhodhan Rural Municipality-3 of Rupandehi was seen flipping through a file containing photographs of badly mutilated bodies at the Lumbini Provincial Hospital in Butwal on Sunday.
Govinda has been searching for the whereabouts of his cousin, 36-year-old Nirajan, who has gone out of contact following last Wednesday’s devastating flood in the Bhotekoshi River of Rasuwa. Nirajan, an employee at the Chilime Hydropower 220 kV Transmission Line, has been missing since the incident.
“I came here after hearing that bodies of flood victims had been brought to the provincial hospital. Even after looking at the photographs, I could not recognize him,” Govinda said. “I just can’t look at the actual bodies.”
Govinda told Himal Press his relatives have visited hospitals in Chitwan, Kawasoti, Pokhara, and elsewhere hoping to find his brother, but they have found neither a body nor any signs of life.
“Whenever I hear news that a new body has arrived, I rush to the hospital,” Govinda said. “I came yesterday and today as well, but the bodies could not be identified.”
Nirajan is Govinda’s elder uncle’s son. His parents and a younger brother live in Suddhodhan Rural Municipality, while he had been living in Kathmandu with his wife Chitra, a government employee, and their four-year-old daughter.
“The Rasuwa flood has caused immense pain to the family,” Govinda said.
The hospital has been swarmed by relatives holding photographs, hoping to identify their loved ones. Dr Lalmani Acharya, campus chief of Mahendra Multiple Campus in Nepalgunj, is among them. He arrived at the hospital carrying photographs of a missing couple: Dr. Bimal Acharya and Sushma Aryal Acharya.
Lalmani, who traveled from Kapilvastu to Butwal searching for his nephew and his wife, said the couple went missing while on a pilgrimage to Kailash-Mansarovar in China.
Bimal, 59, is a retired senior engineer with Nepal Telecom, while Sushma is a serving undersecretary at the National Examination Board. The couple currently live in Saraswatinagar, Chabahil, Kathmandu, and are originally from Mandavi Rural Municipality-4 in Pyuthan.
“They had spoken with their mother, Shanta Laxmi, at around 8:30 a.m. on Wednesday. There has been no information about them since,” said Krishna Prasad Acharya, another elder brother. He said the family could not identify the couple from the photographs of the bodies.
Relatives have been visiting hospitals with photographs after hearing that hundreds of people have gone missing in the flood. They have yet to find their loved ones among the bodies recovered. Some are coming with the hope that, at the very least, they will find a body and be able to perform the final rites. But the condition of the recovered bodies is making identification extremely difficult. Faces are often unrecognizable, while the bodies are severely mutilated and covered in injuries.
“Neither can we recognize them from the photographs nor from the bodies,” said Khima Budha Magar, who came to the provincial hospital searching for her younger brother, Bom Bahadur Pun of Gaumukhi Rural Municipality-3 in Pyuthan.
Bom Bahadur is Khima’s only brother. The 26-year-old, who worked as a mechanical helper at Rasuwagadhi Hydropower, was traveling home to Pyuthan on Wednesday.
“He said he would reach home in the morning. But we lost contact with him after he reached a place called Mailung in Rasuwa,” she said.
An entire village in Palungtar Municipality-5 of Gorkha has joined the search after 30 people from the village went missing while on a pilgrimage to Gosainkunda in Rasuwa. Six of the 36-member group survived after jumping from the bus, while the remaining 30 are missing.
Villagers are visiting hospitals in Chitwan, Nawalparasi and Butwal with the hope of finding their relatives. “We have been searching everywhere for our relatives, but we have not found them anywhere,” said Suresh Chhetri from Palungtar, Gorkha.
According to Chhetri, the group had traveled to Rasuwa on a bus with registration number Ga 2 Kha 1152. The bus was swept away by the flood when it reached the Trishuli Bazaar area.
Among those missing are Sagar Devkota, Ram Maya Devkota, Nanumaya Thapa and Padmakumari Devkota, along with 26 others.
“We traveled through Chitwan and Narayanghat and reached Butwal, but still could not find the bodies,” said Ishwar Bahadur Thapa of Palungtar-5.
His wife, mother-in-law and his wife’s sister are among those missing.
Thapa works at the Mechanical Office in Dumre, Tanahun. He said he spoke with his wife, Nanumaya, after reaching his office at 8:55 a.m., after which contact was lost.
“It has been extremely painful. We have neither found the bodies nor received any sign of life. We are going from hospital to hospital in unbearable distress,” he said.
DSP Nishant Srivastava of the Area Police Office, Butwal, said 18 bodies and nine body parts recovered in Sustha of Nawalparasi West have been kept at the provincial hospital.
Shrivastava said one of the 25 bodies recovered so far has been identified as belonging to a person from Gorkha. Other bodies remain unidentified, he added.
The morgue at the provincial hospital is now filled with bodies recovered from the flood.
