Six years on, family members of those missing in Kedar tragedy still await a miracle

Dehradun: Saurabh Bhatt, a resident of Kanpur, whose wife and nine-year-old daughter went missing during the 2013 Kedarnath floods, visits Uttarakhand every year, in the hope that he may get a trace of them. On the sixth anniversary of the tragedy on Sunday, he even put out advertisements in local dailies announcing a cash reward of Rs 5 lakh to anybody who can provide information regarding his family.“Losing someone to a natural death is obviously a big blow but not knowing what happened to your loved ones is even more excruciating.I have been to Uttarakhand 25 times since the tragedy and have tracked almost every village of the state trying to find my daughter and wife,” Bhatt told TOI over phone, the pain of not knowing what has happened to his family, evident in his voice.
Similar is the story of Nitin Asati, a resident of Dantewada in Chhattisgarh. Seven of Asati’s family members, including his parents, had gone missing during the 2013 calamity but he still hopes that some miracle will bring them back to him. “I did all I could to trace my kin but did not meet with success. I understand that they might not have survived the devastating floods but I still haven’t given up hope,” he said. Amita Yadav, an Indore resident, also clings to similar hopes for her missing father.
As per the initial official record of the state government, as many as 4000 people had gone missing in the Kedarnath disaster that took place between June 13 and 17 in 2013. However, the government later presumed the missing ones as dead. Since the tragedy, the state government has recovered skeletons of 699 bodies from the debris, among which identities of 29 bodies have been ascertained through DNA tests and other methods. Over 3000 still remain missing.