Originally written in Hindi it was translated by Nidhi Samar Singh, says NYT


LUCKNOW, India — The Ganges, or Ganga, is the holiest of India’s rivers, and most Hindus believe that dipping their body in it will purify their soul. But when the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic hit this spring, the river also became Exhibit A for the Modi administration’s failures and deceptions.

The northern state of Bihar recently revised its death toll for April and May from 5,424 to 9,375. Private agencies tasked with conducting Covid-19 tests at Kumbh Mela, a Hindu religious festival in northern India that attracted millions of pilgrims in April — and that turned out to be a coronavirus superspreader event — reportedly falsified some 100,000 results.

The second wave of infections now appears to be ebbing, but the country is struggling to process the staggering toll — nearly 380,000 dead, the vast majority since just March — hobbled by the continuing obfuscation of both local and central authorities. Only, the holy Ganges does not lie.

On May 12, villagers in Buxar, a district in Bihar, found bloated and disfigured corpses floating in the river. Some 100 bodies were fished out there and in another district upstream, Ghazipur. A local senior police officer said the bodies had traveled downriver, from Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state.


Link: https://nyti.ms/3xGCRXR