Kolkata: The three employees of tour agency Chalo Jaai Travel Club who rushed to Kathmandu a day after the flash floods returned home on Friday, shaken by the scale of the tragedy and the grim realisation that finding the 30 tourists who went missing along with their two colleagues would be a Herculean task.Though the trio could not enter the flood-ravaged area, the condition of the remains of victims recovered from more than 100km away gave them a vivid sense of the devastation. It left them rattled.A fourth executive from the travel firm, Manoj Dutta, has stayed back in Kathmandu to coordinate with local partner Samrat Tours & Travels and try to access information that he can then pass on to the office in Kolkata for dissemination among family members of those missing.“They (the three) have returned shaken by what they have seen. No identification is taking place for the bodies being recovered because they are in no condition to be identified. Most of the corpses are maimed beyond recognition. In several cases, only body parts have been recovered. There are also bodies still buried in silt and debris,” one of them recounted.For those who remain missing, it may be a long wait for closure. It will take several days for DNA samples to be collected from the bodies and body parts recovered. Families of the missing will also have to give DNA samples for analysis before cross-matching can be done.“Agencies in Nepal acknowledge this is a Herculean task and they will need resources from other countries, including India. They are doing their best, but their resources are extremely limited compared with the enormity of the task at hand,” said another.Dibyojyoti Basu, founder of Chalo Jaai and a former journalist, said it was not possible for Nepal to tackle the crisis alone. Basu, who was at a loss over how to assist the families and provide them with information, said he was relieved that chief minister Suvendu Adhikari stepped in on Friday and spoke to them, offering government assistance to those who wished to travel to Nepal in search of their loved ones.“In a disaster like this, only the govt can help because it has the means and resources to speak to other governments through the ministry of external affairs and get information that may be difficult for private agencies like us to access. For now, everyone is waiting for China to release data from its immigration office at the Rasuwagadhi border crossing to know if anyone had miraculously escaped the tragedy,” Basu said.
