Indian personnel face hurdles scouting for Myanmar survivors

“Don't touch the body, we will handle it,” a family member told an Indian team that tried to retrieve the body of a woman from the rubble, days after a 7.7-magnitude earthquake jolted Myanmar killing more than 3,000 people.

The woman and her child appeared to have been struck while in prayer: the quake hit the country on the last Friday of Ramzan.

The National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) personnel stepped back respecting the sentiments of the local people at this disaster site near Street 86A in the former royal capital of Mandalay.

“The cruel passage of time had made the body fragile; at the slightest touch, it began to disintegrate. Realising they lacked the expertise to recover it intact, they hesitated. Their earlier reluctance turned into an urgent appeal,” a disaster force member said.

The NDRF personnel resumed their task, carefully extricating the woman's body and preserving the dignity of her final posture in prayer.

“The same voices that had hesitated to accept help now whispered words of gratitude,” a senior NDRF official said. —