A video of a coronavirus patient’s body being dumped into a river has emerged from Uttar Pradesh, reported NDTV on Sunday.

This came after several similar incidents were reported in which corpses, suspected to be of coronavirus patients, were being thrown into rivers. The incidents took place in several districts of Uttar Pradesh, and in Madhya Pradesh and Bihar.

The latest incident took place in Uttar Pradesh’s Balrampur district on Friday. In the video, two men can be seen lifting a body on a bridge over River Rapti. One of them, wearing personal protective equipment, seems to be trying to open the body bag to dump the corpse.

Balrampur Chief Medical Officer VB Singh confirmed that the body was of a coronavirus patient and said that the relatives of the deceased were trying to dump the corpse into the river.

“Preliminary investigations have revealed that the patient was admitted to hospital on May 25, and he died three days later on May 28,” Singh said. “As per Covid protocol, the body was handed over to his relatives. Preliminary investigations reveal that the relatives threw the body into the river. We have filed a case and strict action will be taken.”

Earlier this month, thousands of bodies were found floating in rivers and buried in the sand along the river banks. In a letter, the Centre had directed authorities in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar to prevent the disposal of bodies in the Ganga and its tributaries.

Following this, the National Human Rights Commission had released an advisory to the Union government, all the states and Union Territories, calling for a special law to uphold the dignity of the dead.

According to a report by Dainik Bhaskar published on May 14, over 2,000 bodies were found floating or buried in a 1,140 km stretch along the river Ganga in Uttar Pradesh.

On May 13, seven bodies were found floating in Uttar Pradesh’s Varanasi district. Earlier on May 12, several corpses were found buried in sand in at least two locations along the Ganga river in Uttar Pradesh’s Unnao district.

Two days prior to that, unidentified bodies, suspected to be of coronavirus patients, were found floating in river Ganga in Uttar Pradesh’s Ghazipur district. Later that day, a similar incident was reported fromMadhya Pradesh’s Panna district.

On May 10, floating bodies in the Ganga in Buxar district of Bihar had caused panic among the residents. While some reports said there were around 10 to 12 bodies, others said there were 40-45 corpses. Some reports placed the number even higher, at 150 bodies. A day earlier, several videos showed corpses, also believed to be of Covid-19 patients, floating in the Yamuna river near Hamirpur in Uttar Pradesh.