Bhubaneswar: DNA reports of relatives of four Odisha-origin persons who have been missing since last month’s devastating flash floods have been sent to Nepal.
A state government official said that the Nepalese authorities will inform the concerned families if DNA profiling established a match with any of the unidentified bodies after going through necessary process.
More than 1,400 people died and over 6,000 are still missing after a deadly glacial collapse resulted in flash floods near the Nepal-Tibet border on August 26.
Three weeks after the catastrophe, several bodies recovered from the affected areas are yet to be identified, and authorities are using DNA profiling to try and establish their identities.
Among the unidentified victims are four persons from two Odisha families.
There has been no trace yet of Sandeep Mohapatra and his wife Sidharthi Kumari Sahu, natives of Khordha district settled in Australia since 2018.
Also awaiting information are family members of Gunnam Saibindu and her 18-month-old daughter Gunnam Hareeksha, from Baragada district. Saibindu’s husband Gunnam Jay Krishna works at a hydropower project in Nepal’s Rasuwa district. While he was at the project site when disaster struck that morning, his wife and daughter were staying in a residential colony which was swept away by floodwaters and debris.
Authorities collected DNA samples from the parents of the NRI couple and from Saibindu’s relatives, and sent the reports to the Indian Embassy in Nepal and Nepalese authorities for matching with unidentified bodies.
