Bihar has installed a net across the river Ganga, on its border with Uttar Pradesh, to catch the washed-up bodies of suspected COVID-19 victims, according to AFP. As many as 71 bodies were discovered, stoking fears that the pandemic was raging unseen in India’s vast rural hinterland, where two-thirds of its people live.

Also read: Rural India in trouble as cases, deaths quadruple in 2nd COVID wave: Report

Bihar’s water resources minister Sanjay Kumar said on Twitter on Wednesday that the net was installed across Ganga.

He said Chief Minister Nitish Kumar was “pained at both the tragedy as well as harm to the Ganga” and that patrolling has been increased.

Locals told AFP that relatives immersed the bodies in the river because they could not afford wood for the cremations or because crematoriums were overwhelmed by the number of funerals.

Also, as many as 25 bodies had also been recovered in the Gahmar district of Uttar Pradesh.

The Hindu quoted a local police official there as saying there were long queues at cremation grounds in the state. “It is possible that in hurry some disposed of the bodies in the river like this,” said the official.

Also read: After Buxar, dead bodies found floating in Ganga in Uttar Pradesh’s Ghazipur

India recorded a single-day rise of 4,205 COVID deaths, its highest-ever. This has pushed the death toll to beyond 250,000.

This is particularly the case now that the surge has spread beyond major cities into rural areas, where healthcare facilities are scant and record-keeping poor.