Kathmandu.- The Nepal Police arrested 29 people this Saturday accused of forcing open and looting a safe that had been swept away by Wednesday’s violent flash flood and contained more than 9.2 million Nepalese rupees (about 60,000 dollars) in cash.
“After receiving information that local residents had forced open a safe (…) to arbitrarily steal cash inside, a police contingent was immediately deployed to the scene,” the Police wrote in a statement shared on their social media channels.
Residents of the town of Galchhi, in the southern district of Dhading, found the armored box brought from the high disaster zone in Rasuwa by the force of the water, which dragged everything in its path for more than 150 kilometers, and tried to break it open to steal the money, the police note added.
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During the intervention and body searches of the suspects at the scene, officers intercepted 29 men, aged between 19 and 49, and managed to seize millions of Nepalese rupees in cash.
This mass arrest comes two days after the Chitwan district police confirmed the detention of two suspects after a video went viral on social media in which they could be seen stealing jewelry from a corpse dragged by the flood.
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The police have opened a judicial investigation to clarify the exact origin of the safe and the money found, as well as to determine if there are more people involved in the looting of goods swept away by the floods.
Floods in Nepal: Nearly 700 dead and rescue efforts against the clock
The death toll from Wednesday’s devastating flash flood in the Bhote Koshi basin is now approaching 700, as Nepal and China continue working against the clock to keep rescuing people trapped by the rising river levels and also begin burying unidentified victims.
Furthermore, the number of people whose whereabouts are unknown remains at nearly 3,000 on both sides of the border, while the risk of overflow from the reservoir created by the mud near the disaster area is now almost zero.
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Nepal’s authorities have raised the number of recovered bodies to 675 and China reports 7, bringing the total death toll to 682 between Nepal and Tibet.
The latest balance sheet published by the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority (NDRRMA) put at 2,418 the number of people who remain registered as unreachable or missing, including 589 foreign citizens and 933 workers from hydroelectric projects in the area. Added to them are the 554 missing persons reported by China.
