Scores of families are burying their dead on riverbanks, just as many others are dumping the bodies in rivers, underlining how a high Covid death toll has left crematory space and firewood scarce and too expensive.

Residents of the adjoining villages of Shivrajpur and Rautapur in Unnao district, central Uttar Pradesh, found half-a-dozen decomposing corpses half-buried on the Ganga’s banks at the contiguous Khereshwar Ghat and Buxar Ghat on Thursday afternoon.

Storm and rain had swept away the top layers of the sand and revealed the bodies.

After hours of digging under the police’s watch, the body count had risen to 175 by Friday morning. Most of the dead had been buried about two feet under the sand.

“Since the families fear that someone would spot them, they hurriedly dig up two feet of sand under the cover of darkness and bury the bodies,” Umesh Kumar, a Shivrajpur resident, said.

He said all the bodies had been buried in a 600sqm area, some of them hardly two feet from one another, suggesting “the families had coordinated with each other while picking the spots”.

Villagers said the bodies would have been buried recently since a similar thunderstorm five to six days ago had revealed no bodies.

They said 14 people had died of Covid in Shivrajpur and Rautapur over the past three days, adding that some of the buried bodies would have come from nearby villagers and some from towns such as Unnao (10km away), Fatehpur (30km) and Rae Bareli (40km)

“With space for cremation at a premium everywhere, towns people have been bringing bodies in tempos to our two cremation ghats, which are large and well-known,” a villager said, declining to give his name.

“But they too have run out of space. Some of the staff there would have advised the families to bury the bodies on the nearby riverbank at night.”

Umesh said: “The long wait for cremation is one reason people are burying the dead in the sand. The other is the spiralling cost of firewood, which rose from Rs 100 to Rs 1,000 per quintal in the past one month.”

He added: “We suspect that all the dead were Covid patients because the coronavirus toll is very high in this area.”

K.S. Kanaujia, circle officer for the area, kept up the trend of officials denying dumping of bodies by local people, saying: “Maybe people from the neighbouring district (Fatehpur) have done this.”

Unnao district magistrate Ravindra Kumar said: “We have appealed to the people to cremate their dead according to rituals.”

The local administration has put up banners along the Ganga’s ghats urging people not to bury the dead anywhere they want. The district magistrate has asked the police and panchayat revenue officers to watch the riverbanks.

Earlier this week, corpses were found floating down the Ganga in Buxar (Bihar) and Ghazipur and Ballia (eastern Uttar Pradesh), and down the Ramganga in Bareilly (western Uttar Pradesh). A video of dogs dragging and mauling two bodies has gone viral on social media, adds PTI.

Chief minister Yogi Adityanath ordered on Friday that the State Disaster Response Force and the Provincial Armed Constabulary should patrol rivers and ensure no bodies are disposed of there.