Nepal’s grim DNA puzzle to identify flood dead

A woman displaced by recent flash floods and mudslides, poses for a photograph on the sludge that buried her home in Betrawati, in Nepal's Nuwakot district, on Sept. 9. | REUTERS

AFP-Jiji

Oct 2, 2026

Nuwakot, Nepal – Clutching a photograph of his missing son, Rajesh Ram is pinning his hopes on DNA testing — like thousands of others desperately seeking relatives swept away by Nepal’s catastrophic Himalayan floods.

“I searched for him everywhere, but I could not find his body,” 53-year-old Ram said, still waiting for answers about his son Suroj Kumar, a garage mechanic in Betrawati, which was swamped by the floods.

Nepal was overwhelmed by the sheer scale of destruction from the tsunami-like wall of freezing water and debris triggered by a glacial and rock collapse on the Nepal-China border on Aug. 26.

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