Q&A: How Nepal Can Still Identify Those Who Died in the Flood

The remains recovered after Nepal’s Aug. 26 floods may be badly damaged, decomposed and mixed with mud, vegetation, sewage, fuel and other debris. That leaves authorities facing a difficult question: how can hundreds of unidentified victims be documented and preserved when the country lacks enough facilities for long-term storage?

Professor Lata Gautam, a former worker at Nepal’s National Forensic Science Laboratory who now teaches and researches at Anglia Ruskin University in the United Kingdom, outlined the forensic obstacles in an interview with journalist Bhagirath Yogi. The discussion focused on disaster victim identification, the use of DNA and the handling of remains that may need to be buried temporarily.

Bodies recovered from water can lose soft tissue, become fragmented or be commingled with other remains. Prolonged submersion and scavenger activity can further reduce identifiable features and damage biological material. Gautam said visual identification would therefore be highly unreliable and, by itself, would not meet INTERPOL disaster victim identification standards.

Positive identification relies mainly on DNA, dental evidence and fingerprints, depending on the condition of the remains and available resources. Fingerprints can be difficult to recover from advanced decomposition, while dental identification requires the head or dental structures to remain intact. DNA is especially important, but extracting usable profiles from bone and teeth is more complex than working with soft tissue. It requires advanced laboratory facilities, trained personnel and time.

The flood has also raised questions about how unidentified remains should be recorded and “temporarily” buried while preserving the possibility of future identification. Gautam’s comments point to the practical limits Nepal faces as authorities conduct mass burials while dealing with public health concerns and inadequate preservation capacity.

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Visual identification would be highly unreliable and, on its own, does not constitute a reliable means of identification under INTERPOL DVI standards.