Two weeks after the Bhotekoshi floods swept through Rasuwa and neighbouring districts, families of the missing are turning to DNA testing to identify recovered remains but Nepal's two forensic laboratories are overwhelmed, and answers are taking far longer than grieving relatives can bear.
Purna Prasad Adhikari, from Bharatpur in Chitwan, has spent two weeks moving between police stations, hospitals and government offices in Dhading, Tanahun and Pokhara searching for news of his missing son, 40-year-old Bikash Babu Adhikari, a police constable posted at Rasuwa's Timure near the Nepal-China border. His son went missing along with 28 other police personnel a toll ICN has reported separately when the flood hit. Having found nothing through conventional search channels, Adhikari gave a blood sample for DNA testing at the Chitwan Chamber of Commerce and Industry, according to a Nepali media portal's report.
A system built for a fraction of the demandNepal has only two laboratories capable of conducting the kind of DNA testing needed to identify flood victims: the Nepal Police Central Forensic Science Laboratory, and the National Forensic Science Laboratory, which operates under the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation. Under normal circumstances, the two labs together process fewer than 1,000 samples a year combined. Since the flood, more than 2,000 samples have arrived at the two laboratories in a single surge. A senior scientific officer at the National Forensic Science Laboratory in Khumaltar, Lalitpur said his laboratory alone had received samples from 530 people a combination of recovered remains and blood samples from relatives of the missing, submitted for comparison. Relatives can give samples at the Nepal Police Hospital in Kathmandu or through district police offices outside the capital.
According to a Department of Tourism notice covering data through September 6, 775 people remained missing at that point, including 587 foreign nationals, reported from more than 35 countries. Separate Ministry of Foreign Affairs figures from the same period put the number of recovered bodies at 1,355. ICN found inconsistent figures for the total number still missing across different government sources released the same week and could not reconcile them; the 775 figure, drawn from a specific dated Department of Tourism notice with an internally consistent breakdown by gender and nationality, is used here as the more precise of the available figures, but readers and editors should treat all missing-person tallies from this disaster as provisional and subject to revision.
The scale of foreign nationals among the missing means the same overwhelmed identification process readers in Nepal are following also affects families abroad in India, China, and elsewhere who are waiting on word about relatives who were in the affected area, whether as workers, residents, or trekkers and tourists. Tunnel rescue and forensic teams from India, China, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, the UAE and Malaysia have been coordinating with Nepal's own Army and Police using DNA kits and specialised equipment, according to Nepali media portals meaning some identification and repatriation questions may run through both Nepali and foreign consular or forensic channels simultaneously.
For Nepali diaspora readers who have or fear they have missing family members in the affected districts: samples from relatives can be submitted at the Nepal Police Hospital in Kathmandu or through district police offices; if you are abroad and unable to travel, contact your nearest Nepali embassy or consulate for guidance on how a sample might be arranged or coordinated remotely ICN was not able to confirm during this research whether a formal remote-submission process exists, and this should be checked directly with the Ministry of Home Affairs or Nepal Police before being presented to readers as a concrete option.
