Ambulance staff in India have been accused of dumping the bodies of Covid-19 victims into the Ganges River, as corpses washed up on its banks for the second consecutive day, writes The Telegraph.

On Tuesday, an MP from India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Janardhan Singh Sigriwal, claimed that the bodies of the Covid dead were being thrown into the river by ambulance staff in the northern state of Bihar.

Video was then shared by leading Indian news channel NDTV showing ambulance staff apparently throwing corpses into the river.

On Tuesday, more than a dozen bodies were seen floating in the Ghazipur district of Uttar Pradesh, one of the Indian states worst affected by the country’s enormous second wave of the virus.

Local residents spotted the decomposing corpses in the water and alerted the authorities, who have launched an investigation into where the bodies came from. Their condition suggested they had been in the water for several days.

Police patrols will be established in the area to ensure further bodies are not dumped in the river. Ghazipur is 35 miles upstream from where approximately 100 bodies washed up on Monday, in the Buxar district of Bihar state. Healthcare infrastructure in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, two of India’s poorest states, has collapsed under rising case numbers.