Sunita Thapa and her son Dinesh were at home in Trishuli Bazaar, in Nepal’s Rasuwa district, when the flood struck on August 26. Within moments, the family’s house and shop were gone, swallowed by the current, and so were Sunita and Dinesh. A search began, and three days later, Dinesh’s body was found in the plains of Narayangarh, badly damaged.

“The body was severed. Only the upper part, above the chest, was found. The face and chest were intact, so he could be identified,” says Jeet Bahadur Ranabhat, whose wife Shobha is Sunita’s cousin. Local residents cremated Dinesh on the riverbank. Sunita remains untraced.

Ranabhat’s family lives in Delhi’s Shakarpur – one of many Nepali households scattered across the city now living with a particular kind of anguish. Nepal’s floods, among the worst to hit the country in years, have already killed more than a thousand people and left thousands missing, overwhelming rescue teams and cutting off entire valleys. More than 11,000 people have been rescued from flood-affected areas in Nepal so far, while around 4,000 people were still missing.

For many Nepali families and relatives in Delhi, there is no way to even reach the people they are worried about. Like Sunita’s, whose husband had gone to Kathmandu for work when the flood hit and who has still not been able to reach the affected area. Ranabhat says the administration has sealed it off. From Delhi, he and his wife stay in touch with him, trying to offer what comfort they can. 

Three family members swept away in a bus

Bhim Bahadur Kunwar, who has lived in Faridabad for nearly 30 years, is originally from Palungtar in Nepal’s Gorkha district. His cousin’s son, Sagar Sapkota (33), drove a bus in Nepal.

On the day of the disaster, Sagar had set out with around 38 passengers aboard. His mother, Ramamaya Sapkota (57), and sister, Sushmita Kunwar (19), were also on the bus. About seven kilometres from the China border, floodwaters surged suddenly, sweeping the bus and everyone in it into the current.

Since then, only one body from among those on the bus has been recovered – found far from the site. There has been no information about the rest.

Bhim Bahadur says his brother-in-law and aunt have been in shock, and family members are searching different parts of Nepal for their relatives. In Delhi, Bhim Bahadur watches every piece of news coming out of Nepal, still hoping the next update will be about his own family.

‘We were also going, but work came up’

Bal Krishna Pandey has lived in India since 1988 and works with the Maitri Nepal Foundation. He is preparing to travel to Nepal to search for the missing, including Sumi Adhikari (41), the wife of his Australia-based relative, Nav Pandey.

Sumi had travelled to Nepal with the S3 Isha Foundation group; contact with the entire group has been lost since the disaster. Nav Pandey and their two children are in Australia, anxiously waiting for updates.

According to Bal Krishna, Sumi’s last known location was the immigration office at the Gyirong border crossing on the China-Nepal border. He says her husband is in a terrible state, and the family is in shock. Bal Krishna says he and his wife had been due to join the same trip: “You could call it fate’s cruel game. We were also going, but work came up and we had to cancel our trip.”

Spoke to his mother in the morning, then the phone went dead

Newslaundry met Roshan Kumar Shah, who has lived and worked in Delhi since 2005. His nephew in Nepal, Sudhir Kumar Shah (34), was a mechanical engineer working on the Trishuli-1 hydropower project in Rasuwa.

According to Roshan, Sudhir was part of a team of about 60 people working on the project when the flood struck and swept the entire team away. There has been no credible information about any of them since.

Sudhir spoke to the family regularly. On the morning of the accident, he had called his mother, but the phone line later went dead. Roshan says Sudhir’s sister, brother-in-law and the rest of the family back in the village are still waiting for news.

In Delhi, we met Raghunath Pandey, from Gulmi village in Nepal. He said a man from his village, Yadav Bhandari, worked as a government employee with the customs department in Bhotekoshi. According to Raghunath, when the flash flood struck Bhotekoshi, Yadav was at his office. 

His body was recovered some time later, and his family and fellow villagers have since cremated him. Raghunath says the entire village is mourning.

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