Relatives hold cremations without bodies for Nepal’s missing flood victims

Fewer than one in 10 recovered bodies of people killed in deadly floods has been formally identified – so families are opting to cremate effigies.Published On 5 Sep 2026Kathmandu, Nepal – Nine days after his father, Dinesh, went missing, Sujan Achhami, 23, carries a body to the bank of the Bagmati River next to the famous Pashupatinath Temple in Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu. He lays the body on the Brahmanal – a stone on which corpses are placed for rituals. The priest reads mantras, directing Sujan to wash the body and offer a traditional clay lamp and flowers.Except it’s not a real body.Catastrophic flash floods swept through northern and central Nepal on August 26, killing more than 1,200 people and leaving almost 5,000 others missing. With hopes of finding them alive – or even dead – fading, grieving relatives are being forced to say goodbye without bodies. So, many are instead performing symbolic last rites using effigies made of sacred kusha grass.“We searched for them everywhere,” says Khim Bahadur Gharti Magar, whose uncle Tham Bahadur Pun, 71, a former British Army soldier, and aunt Chausara Pun, 64, were on a pilgrimage in northern Nepal when the flood hit. “We couldn’t find them.”He has also performed these symbolic last rites for his missing relatives, right here on the bank of the Bagmati.“There were 17 buses in the group they were with. During our search, we found four other people [dead bodies] who were part of the pilgrimage group. That’s why we decided to cremate,” Magar says.Sher Bahadur Pun, the deceased man’s son-in-law and a senior health official with the Nepal-government" class="entity-link entity-organization" data-entity-id="200893" data-entity-type="organization">Nepal government, says the family has given DNA samples to police in the hope their identities might be traced later.