Woman whose family held funeral without her rescued alive 10 days after Nepal floods

A woman in her 60s is rescued alive 10 days after being buried in floodwaters in Nepal. [Xinhua/Nepali Army]

A woman in her 60s who went missing in Nepal's catastrophic floods — and whose family had already held a funeral in her absence — was rescued alive 10 days later.

Chandika Shrestha, a resident of Betrawati in Nepal's Nuwakot district, was pulled from her mud-buried home on Saturday, 10 days after floodwaters engulfed the village on Aug. 26, according to CNN and The New York Times.

Shrestha's house was almost entirely submerged in mud, with only the rooftop and the tops of the upper-floor windows visible above the surface, The New York Times reported. Nearby residents heard cries for help that day and alerted rescue teams.

Rescuers crawled through the mud and dug their way to her with shovels, passing her water once they reached her. She was airlifted to a hospital in the capital, Kathmandu, early that afternoon.

A Nepali Army spokesperson said she had suffered a deep wound to her right leg and was facing surgery.

"Her house was buried under the debris," Ganesh Kumar, the local official in charge of the area, told CNN. Shrestha's husband remains missing.

A funeral ritual is held in Nepal following the devastating floods. [AFP]

Shrestha had gone missing along with four other family members when the floods struck. Believing they would never recover the bodies, her family wove dolls from kusha — sacred grass used in Hindu rituals — and cremated them in a symbolic funeral in place of the remains.

In Hindu and Buddhist traditions, a soul is believed unable to attain salvation if funeral rites are not performed.

As a week passed with no sign of the missing, families who lost loved ones in the floods began holding such doll funerals, and temples in the area have been so overwhelmed with grieving relatives that finding space has become difficult.

In the Betrawati area, the floods wiped out nearly 200 market stalls that had lined both banks of the river, leaving no trace. Two bridges and a temple frequented by residents were also destroyed. A two-story police station was uprooted and toppled onto its side. Nearly 300 people are reported missing from the area alone.

The disaster, triggered by a glacial and bedrock collapse on Aug. 26, had killed 1,375 people and left more than 5,500 missing as of Saturday.

dbsdn1110@heraldcorp.com