Bollywood actor and filmmaker Farhan Akhtar has become the first big name from the entertainment industry to publicly lash out at the government after photos and videos of unclaimed bodies floating in the river Ganges in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh went viral. Farhan said that the visuals were ‘heartbreaking’ and demanded fixing of accountability for the ‘failures in the system.’
He wrote, “The news of scores of bodies being discovered floating in rivers and washed up on its banks is absolutely heartbreaking. The virus will be defeated someday but there has to be accountability for these failures in the system. Until then, the pandemic chapter is not closed!”
The news of scores of bodies being discovered floating in rivers and washed up on its banks is absolutely heartbreaking. The virus will be defeated someday but there has to be accountability for these failures in the system. Until then, the pandemic chapter is not closed!
— Farhan Akhtar (@FarOutAkhtar) May 12, 2021
Farhan’s public criticism came hours after as many as 71 bodies were found in decomposed condition from the Ganges in Bihar’s Buxar district. While the administration in Buxar said that those bodies were dumped in Uttar Pradesh before they floated to Bihar, the Uttar Pradesh government said that it was not correct for it to be blamed for the en-masse dumping of dead bodies.
However, authorities claimed to find as many as 25 dead bodies from a river in Uttar Pradesh’ Ghazipur district too.
It’s believed that the dead bodies found from the Ganges in Bihar of COVID positive patients, whose relatives simply chose to dump them in the river. According to another theory, these bodies were dumped in the river since relatives of those dead due to COVID-19 complications found it find it difficult to cremate them. Both Uttar Pradesh and Bihar have governments led by the BJP. While the Hindutva party had won a historic landslide in the assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh in 2017, it formed a government with the help of the Janata Dal-United in Bihar last year.
