Nearly 2,000 bodies have been retrieved from India’s river Ganges by authorities in two states, according to local media.
Officials reportedly said they were most likely victims of the country’s tragic surge in Covid cases whose family members could not afford funeral rites.
Hindu funerals customarily cremate the deceased and scatter the ashes at a site of religious importance.
But families in remote villages have been dumping their loved ones in the river, which is the most sacred body of water in Hinduism.
Authorities fear it could lead to further spread of the virus as well as other health risks in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.
The two northern states, which share a 900-mile stretch of the Ganges and have a total population of nearly 300 million, have been among the hardest hit by the staggering wave of cases.
Daily cases in India reached a peak of over 400,000 last week, with an average of 4,000 deaths per day.
Federal government officials told the Asian Age newspaper that all the bodies found have been disposed of with proper religious rituals, but have warned local bodies to crack down on the practice.
Navneet Sehgal, a spokesperson for the Uttar Pradesh government, rejected the figures cited by Asian Age but admitted police have been deployed along the river.
He denied claims that bodies were not being buried out of desperation, arguing that some riverside villages do not cremate their dead during certain periods of religious significance.
He told Reuters: ‘We keep recovering 10 to 20 bodies every now and then’.
As well as the police deployment, ‘we have also sent communications to local authorities that this practice be stopped’, he added.
The Indian government recently accepted a science advisory panel’s recommendation to widen the gap between vaccine doses from 12 to 16 weeks.
Many states have complained of shortages of the jab, which has piled pressure on the World Health Organisation’s international vaccine-sharing programme.
Government advisor V K Paul at the time said the move was ‘a scientific decision and not expedience’.