Dozens of suspected COVID victims found in India’s Ganges

Residents in the area think bodies were dumped because crematoriums were overwhelmed or funeral pyres too expensive.

Dozens of bodies of people believed to have died from COVID-19 have washed up on the banks of the Ganges river in northern India, officials said on Monday. District official Ashok Kumar said that about 40 corpses washed up in Buxar district near the border between Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, two of India’s poorest states. “We have directed concerned officials to dispose of all bodies, to either bury or cremate them,” Kumar told the AFP news agency.