Bank vault carried down Trishuli by floods, 29 held

As a deadly flood swept through parts of Nepal, a bank vault was carried from Rasuwa and the upper catchment areas down the Trishuli River into Dhading, where 29 people were arrested while allegedly breaking it open and taking cash from inside. The vault had been washed away by the floods and carried downstream before reaching Dhading. A joint patrol team of the Armed Police Force and Nepal Police found the suspects at the site as they were allegedly extracting money from the damaged safe, as cited by Nepal News. Authorities recovered Rs 9,268,505 in cash from the group and took the 29 suspects into custody. According to Nepal police spokesperson Deputy Inspector General (DIG) Abi Narayan Kafle, all 29 suspects are in custody at the District Police Office in Dhading, where police are conducting further investigations and initiating legal proceedings.

Nepal police have also arrested two men for allegedly stealing gold earrings from the body of a woman swept downstream by flooding in the Narayani River, after a video of the incident went viral on social media. Police identified the two men from a 41-second video that shows them pulling the woman’s body from the river before allegedly removing earrings from both her ears. Nepal Police later shared the video, saying the men had been taken into custody for allegedly stealing the earrings from the deceased woman. The video shows the men using wooden planks and the woman’s hair to pull her body out of the water. They then appear to remove earrings from both ears and place them aside. Several people are visible around the scene, with some recording the incident on their phones.

Nepal is continuing a large-scale search-and-rescue operation after flash floods and landslides struck the Nepal-Tibet border region, sweeping away villages, roads, bridges and other infrastructure. A glacier collapse on Wednesday sent a torrent of rock, ice, mud and debris into Himalayan river systems, triggering floods that swept through towns, destroyed bridges and roads, and damaged major hydropower stations. More than 600 people have been killed, while over 2,000 remain unaccounted for. Nepal may need between $4 billion and $5 billion to rebuild after this week’s floods, Finance Minister Swarnim Wagle told Reuters on Saturday, with the estimated cost equivalent to nearly a tenth of the country’s economy. "The initial estimate is between $4-$5 billion. Just an estimate," Wagle said, as cited by Reuters. "We will require much less than what we needed for the 2015 earthquake. Loss and damage is being assessed."