Volunteers unload wood from a truck to be used for mass cremation at Kedarnath at an airport in Gauchar. Photo courtesy: Reuters
After a delay caused due to bad weather, the process of mass cremation has been expedited in
Kedarnath, the temple town that bore the brunt of the torrential rains which pounded Uttarakhand almost two weeks ago.
Incessant rains had held up funerals for at least two days, before it finally began yesterday, amid much concern about a threat of disease from decomposing bodies and poor sanitation.
"A total of 18 bodies have been cremated so far in Kedarnath. The next round of cremation will start only after formalities like identification, DNA sample preservation, post mortem of the bodies are completed," Deputy Inspector General Sanjay Gunjyal, under whose supervision the exercise is taking place, told Press Trust of India.
(Full coverage)A second team of doctors, forensic experts and police personnel has left for Kedarnath to complete the formalities, he said. Army helicopters also flew in priests to conduct funeral prayers before the cremations of nearly 300 bodies that were found buried in silt near the 1,000-year-old Kedarnath temple - one of Hinduism's most revered pilgrim sites - after a wall of water came tearing down the hillsides with car-sized boulders in tow 11 days ago.
Authorities had earlier airlifted tonnes of logs for the cremations, but the funerals were delayed by intermittent rain, said Amit Chandola, a state government spokesman.
The National Disaster Management Authority or NDMA has said that the funeral is likely to end by Friday. "A yagna is also been conducted in Haridwar for the departed souls. NDMA is coordinating and Uttarakhand government is taking care of the cremation," NDMA vice chairman M Shashidhar Reddy said.
The death toll in the Uttarakhand disaster is 822; over 350 are still missing. Officials said close to 100,000 people have been rescued and evacuated so far, but at least 4,000 still remain stranded, most of them in Badrinath, another holy town.
(Read) Entire towns were flattened by landslides that were followed by floods in the hill state. Roads were washed away and telecommunication links snapped, cutting off many parts of the state.