Wayanad landslides: Nail polish helps in identifying teen’s body amid claims from two families

Anamika, a class 9 student of GVHSS, Vellarmala, was at their ancestral house on the Chooralmala school road when the landslide occurred.

Chooralmala resident Brezhnev waits in front of the MSM Hall in Meppadi, where the bodies of landslide victims are kept for identification, on Sunday Photo | B P Deepu

MEPPADI: Staring blankly into the distance, Brezhnev sat on the steps of the MSM hall in Meppadi. He was among the scores of people who had come to identify the bodies of the victims of the landslides that ravaged three villages in Wayanad.

Brezhnev’s daughter Anamika, 14, has been missing after the tragedy. She was at their ancestral house on the Chooralmala school road when the landslide occurred.

On Sunday morning, Brezhnev was summoned to identify a partially decomposed body, presumed to be that of a teenage girl, recovered from river Chaliyar in Malappuram.

Only the forearm of the body could provide any clue, but Brezhnev identified it as his daughter. With a heavy heart, he told the authorities that his daughter was wearing a blue nail polish when the tragedy struck, and that it was still intact. But officials asked him to wait as another family too had raised claim over the body.

An hour later, the other family arrived. A group of women with grief-stricken faces firmly said it was their missing girl. As their child never used nail polish, they claimed her nails might have turned blue after the body remained in the river for some days.

The claims put the authorities in a fix. After an internal meeting they decided to scratch the nail in the presence of both families, and it was proved to be nail polish.Finally, the body was handed over to Brezhnev and cremated at the community crematorium near the Mariyamman temple, Meppadi.

Anamika was a class 9 student of GVHSS, Vellarmala. The family lost three others — Anamika’s grandmother and her aunt and husband.