NEW DELHI, July 1, 2013: How many people are missing in the floods of Uttarakhand? There is no way anyone can tell. Not as yet. Perhaps an accurate figure will never ever be known. What we can say, though, is that on June 24 an email from the Uttarakhand government's information department in Dehradun, forwarded to TOI by a source, listed the names of 909 persons looking for their parents, children, spouses, relatives, friends and even fellow villagers. Adding up, it turns out that a total of 7,548 pilgrims were being searched for. The particular 'List of missing persons in Garhwal' hasn't been updated since.

But when Bhaskaranand Joshi, secretary, revenue and disaster management, Uttarakhand, and the man in charge of the post-cloudburst ops, was contacted to comment on this - as this flew in the face of the government's contention till then on the number of missing, which was a very low 334 - he said, "I deny this. And you can quote me." He went on to add that "all sorts of emails are floating around these days. This may not be genuine."

We decided to find out the truth and sat down with the roughly-done excel sheet that had come with the email, making hundreds of calls over 48 hours to some of the 909 people in the list. The names turned out to be authentic, as did the phone numbers. We found one looking for 10 persons, another 17, and one a heart-wrenching 32. While a few had abandoned their search, a small number had been rescued and made their way back home. But most were to hear from those on whose behalf they had called; still hoping, waiting, despairing for their loved ones.

Add to that the fact that the email did not account for hundreds of others who haven't gone to the authorities with their petition — for want of knowledge, information, traveling expenses, even low level of trust in government. It is a scary scenario. Moreover, like Kavi Madhava Mishra from Moradabad says, "I have filed a missing report in Dehradun and my FIR mentions that 11 persons from Chandausi have vanished in Uttarakhand. Though they are not related to me, I had to do this because they have left no one in their family to launch a search mission for them." There are numerous groups of pilgrims like the one Mishra is talking about.

'Miracle if most missing found alive'

The email itself has a few disturbing entries. While some have left the name of just one person to be located, there are others who have sent 47 names, like "Ritesh Agarwal and 46 others" from Rajasthan. Agarwal had last been contacted on June 17 at Harsil. There is another pilgrim who remains untraced along with 33 others.

When TOI called up Devranjan from the list, he was in Chennai. He said, "My mother Radhabai, 58, is missing since June 14. She had left Tamil Nadu in a bus with 36 others. I have knocked on every possible door to retrieve some information about her. I've got nothing."

Mahesh Vyas from Jodhpur said he was looking for his son Lakshay. "I last spoke to my son on June 15," Vyas said. "Lakshay had gone to Kedarnath with five of his relatives from Delhi. All of them are missing. Can you help?" Countless others had similar stories to tell, similar queries about their kin. Fifty-odd calls on Saturday resulted in a bunch of people looking for 314 missing. A separate set of calls had family members desperate for 283 others.

While many from here may still be found, doctors, administration officials, NGO workers on the spot say it will take an impossible miracle now for a majority of the missing to return. Fingers remain crossed. Prayers continue to go up.

Source: The Hindu, DT. July 1, 2013.