Covid victim’s corpse is thrown into a river by PPE-wearing relatives in India

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A Covid vicitm’s body was dumped into an Indian river by relatives wearing PPE in shocking footage showing the devastating toll of the pandemic in the virus-stricken country.

The video, taken on Friday, shows two people, one wearing full protective clothing, hoisting the wrapped corpse over the side of the bridge.

Police have identified the pair and arrested them after the dumping in the Rapti River in Balrampur, Uttar Pradesh.

The men were named as Sanjay Kumar and Manoj Kumar, while the victim was identified only as Premnath from Shohratgadh Siddharathanagar.

He had been admitted to hospital on Tuesday after testing positive for Covid before he died on Friday while undergoing treatment, according to India Today.

In according with Covid rules, his body was handed over to his relatives for cremation but they instead chose to dispose of the corpse in the river.

Many crematoriums have been overwhelmed with the huge death toll from the virus, and families have been allowed to carry out home cremations.

Bloated corpses have been seen floating on the Ganges amid claims the true death toll is far higher than the reported 329,100.

Locals in Uttar Pradesh say they are being forced to wade through corpses while bathing in the river as feral dogs and birds feast on the bodies. 

India has been fighting a serious third wave of coronavirus for the past month, and although the number of cases are starting to decline, the country faces an in increasing daily death toll for weeks to come. 

Over the weekend, India recorded its lowest daily rise in new Covid cases in 45 days. 

The tally of infections stood at 173,790 on Saturday, its lowest daily rise in little over a month, while deaths rose by 3,617. 

The total number of cases now stands at 22.7 million, according to Health Ministry data. 

It comes as the country’s capital of New Delhi, is set to gradually end its weeks-long lockdown from Monday, when factories will be allowed to operate and construction work can resume. 

The city recorded peaks of 25,000 cases in April, but is now reporting less than 1,500 cases per day. 

Despite the easing of certain restrictions, experts have warned that people in the country should continue to follow safety protocols, reaffirming that the pandemic is not over in India just yet.     

Medical researcher Bhramar Mukherjee told the BBC: ‘The notion that the peak has passed may give false sense of security to everyone when their states are in fact entering the crisis mode.

‘We must make it clear that no state is safe yet.’

The country has been left reeling after a deadly second wave of the virus hit in March. 

Hospitals, morgues and crematoriums have been overwhelmed ever since, with many areas of the country suffering chronic oxygen shortages. 

In recent weeks, a horrifying Covid-19 complication has also swept the country, with thousands of people contracting black fungus. 

The wave of infections with the previously very rare condition has been blamed on excessive use of steroids to treat the country’s millions of Covid patients, experts say. 

Mucormycosis, as it is scientifically known, is highly aggressive and surgeons sometimes have to remove patients’ eyes, nose and jaw to stop it reaching the brain. The death rate is over 50 percent. 

India normally deals with fewer than 20 black fungus cases a year but now there are several thousand across the country including more than 2,000 in Maharashtra state, home to India’s financial capital Mumbai. 

At least nine Indian states have declared the problem an epidemic. The cities of New Delhi, Mumbai, Ahmedabad and Bangalore have opened special wards. 

Before the coronavirus pandemic, only those with severely compromised immunity, such as HIV or organ transplant patients, were at risk. 

Earlier this week, analysis by the New York Times was published, which suggested that the death toll in the country could be as many as 1.6 million compared to the official 310,000 fatalities reported.  

The paper’s ‘more likely’ scenario estimates the number of deaths to be 1.6 million, while the worst-case could be as high as 4.2 million.

By comparison, Britain recorded just nine deaths on May 27 and more than 127,000 fatalities in total. The US has recorded about 590,000, also suspected to be an undercount, in a population of about 330 million. 

Official figures in India put the toll at 310,000 in a population of 1.4 billion.

In consulting with more than a dozen experts, the Times said it found it difficult to get a clear picture even of the total number of infections in India due to poor record-keeping and a lack of widespread testing. 

Vinod Paul, head of India’s coronavirus task force, dismissed the study and said it was ‘not backed by any evidence and is based on distorted estimates.

‘Our [fatality] number is 0.05 per cent of those infected. They’ve said 0.3 per cent. Why? On what basis have you decided that it’s 0.3 per cent of that large infection universe? There is no basis at all. Five people get together, make phone calls to each other and then throw this number. That’s how this report has been done,’ Mr Paul told NDTV. 

‘There may be some late reporting of deaths but there’s no intent of any state or the Centre. If I apply the same three times yardstick to New York, then there would be 50,000 deaths. But they say it’s 16,000. So this is distorted,’ he added.