Nepal's search and identification effort after the August 26, 2026 Bhotekoshi floods continued on September 20, with police reporting 4,655 people still missing. An RSS dispatch carried by Radio Nepal attributed the figure to Nepal Police and gave an 11 a.m. cutoff for its accompanying report of 1,436 recovered bodies. These are the agency's dated recovery figures, not a count independently established by this publication.
The same police account reported 3,283 DNA samples: 1,286 collected from recovered bodies and 1,997 from relatives. It said details of 1,362 unidentified bodies had been uploaded to the police website. A reported 7,975 police personnel were engaged in search, rescue, relief distribution and management of remains across affected areas, illustrating the scale of the ongoing identification operation.
In Jumla, police spokesperson Salikram Khanal said samples from relatives of 33 missing people from Patarasi Rural Municipality and six from Guthichaur had been sent to the National Forensic Science Laboratory in Lalitpur. District health information officer Prem Bahadur Somai described work on 39 blood samples, assisted by health workers from the Karnali Academy of Health Sciences. Other relatives had provided samples in Kathmandu.
Jumla's district administration reported that 93 people from the district were initially missing and 30 had subsequently been located, leaving 63 unaccounted for. The district figures are a local part of the disaster's human impact, not additional people to be added to the national missing total. Officials said identified remains would be returned following DNA matching.
A separate local account recorded symbolic funeral rites for ten missing people from Mathilorpa village in Patarasi. Vice-chairperson Janamaya Rokaya said they had worked at the Hanku Besi hydropower project in Rasuwa and were swept away on August 26. Families used kusha-grass effigies because bodies had not been recovered. Those rites marked family mourning while the official search and identification process continued.
