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By Bhakra canal, they sit down and weep Khanauri/Padarthkherhi (Sangrur), February 19 When a tired Shingara moves to another place, a fresh group of anxious villagers arrives. Another search begins, with eyes wet and hope giving way to despair. Khanauri is a place of floating bodies as Haryana and Punjab quibble over jurisdiction. Scores of families from Punjab arrive at the canal site to locate their missing relatives as the water channel flows towards Haryana, coming from as far back as Ropar. In the absence of any government official, grieving relatives turn to private divers. These divers charge anything between Rs 1000 and Rs 10,000. In case a body reaches "no-man's-land", it is allowed to pass into Haryana as policemen do not want to register a case. "If no claimant fishes out a body, it is allowed to pass into Haryana as the policemen avoid registration of an FIR," says Manoj, a Block Samiti member in Haryana who routinely crosses the site. The Tribune team was witness to piles of bodies — dogs, pigs and humans.
Teenager Satnam knows how morbid his work of collecting coconuts from the flowing canal is. "Sometimes, one chances upon a human foot while looking for coconuts,"
he says. A police station on the Punjab side is a stone's throw from the canal. When The Tribune team spoke to the policemen, they feigned ignorance. But after the intervention of a senior officer, they agreed to take out a fresh corpse. "If I take out one body, there is another floating behind it. We have other things to do," said a senior police officer. Patiala DIG LK Yadav said he would look into the matter.
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