Nepal's grim DNA puzzle to identify flood dead

Clutching a photograph of his missing son, Rajesh Ram is pinning his hopes on DNA testing — like thousands of others desperately seeking relatives swept away by Nepal’s catastrophic Himalayan floods. “I searched for him everywhere, but I could not find his body,” 53-year-old Ram told AFP, still waiting for answers about his son Suroj Kumar, a garage mechanic in Betrawati, which was swamped by the floods. Nepal was overwhelmed by the sheer scale of destruction from the tsunami-like wall of freezing water and debris triggered by a glacial and rock collapse on the Nepal-China border on August 26. The scale of the identification task is immense. A forensic analyst conducts DNA testing to help identify missing flash flood victims at the National Forensic Science Laboratory in Lalitpur on September 19, 2026. —AFP/File With thousands of DNA profiles to process, fragmented remains and limited technical capacity and manpower, experts warn matching bodies to families could take weeks. Nepali disaster authorities have recovered 1,454 bodies — but around a third of those are only partial remains. Just 112 bodies have been identified and returned to their families. A further 5,285 people are missing in Nepal, including hundreds of foreigners. In China, the toll is 43 dead and 519 missing, according to state media — taking the combined toll to nearly 1,500 dead and 5,800 missing. At Nepal’s two forensic laboratories, both in Kathmandu, experts are working to profile samples and build a database on a scale they have never handled before. A forensic analyst conducts DNA testing to help identify missing flash flood victims at the National Forensic Science Laboratory in Lalitpur on September 19, 2026. —AFP/File “In a year we would analyse 1,000-1,500 samples, often in case of paternity or crime scenes,” said Mukul Pradhan, chief scientific officer at the National Forensic Science Laboratory. “We are now processing thousands of samples.” ‘Pain’ A total of