Two men caught on tape throwing Covid-19 victim's body into river in Uttar Pradesh; booked by police

A shocking video, showing a body being dumped into the river by two men, one in a PPE kit, in Uttar Pradesh's Balrampur district, went viral on social media Sunday prompting the police to register a case in this regard.

Two persons were booked under the Epidemics Act and other relevant sections of the penal code, according to the police sources in Balrampur.

Sources said that the body was that of one Prem Nath Mishra, a resident of Shohratgarh in UP's Pratapgarh district, who was admitted to the district hospital on May 25 after testing positive for Covid-19. Mishra died three days later.

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''The body was handed over to the family members on Saturday,'' a senior district official said.

Sources said that as the vehicle carrying the dead body reached the bridge over Rapti river, the family members told the driver of the hearse car that they wanted to cremate the body at Sisai Ghat by the river. The driver then brought the body out from the vehicle and left after handing over it to them.

The family members, instead of cremating the body, dumped it into the river from the middle of the bridge. A passerby captured the entire incident on his cell phone and later uploaded it on social media.

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Police said that Mishra's nephew Sanjay Kumar Mishra and another person had been booked in this regard and the matter was being investigated.

Hundreds of dead bodies, many of people dying from Covid-19, have either been dumped into rivers or buried in pits barely three to four feet deep by the river bank.

According to the reports, UP government officials had knowledge that the bodies of people dying from Covid-19 were being dumped into the rivers.