Bodies of COVID-19 victims have been found dumped in some Indian rivers, a Uttar Pradesh government said in a letter accessed by Reuters, the first official acknowledgement of an alarming practice it said may stem from poverty and fear of the disease in villages.

Images of corpses drifting down the Ganges river have shocked a nation reeling under the world's worst surge in infections.

While many have attributed these bodies to the pandemic, Uttar Pradesh has until now not publicly revealed the cause of the deaths.

"The administration has information that bodies of those who have succumbed to COVID-19 or any other disease are being thrown into rivers instead of being disposed of as per proper rituals," a senior state official, Manoj Kumar Singh, said in a May 14 letter to district heads that was reviewed by Reuters.

"As a result, bodies have been recovered from rivers in many places."

Singh confirmed the letter to Reuters but said autopsies on four to five bodies in the state's district of Ghazipur had not revealed virus infection.

"The bodies are decomposed, so I am not sure in this state it can be found out about corona positive".

In the memo, Singh said a lack of funds for materials such as firewood for cremation, religious beliefs in some communities, and families abandoning victims for fear of the disease were among the likely reasons for the surge in dumping.

On Saturday, Uttar Pradesh spokesman Navneet Sehgal denied media reports that as many as 2,000 corpses of possible virus victims had been pulled from rivers in the state and neighbouring Bihar in recent days.

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