Nepal arrests two men for looting flood victim's earrings

Nepal Police arrested two men on August 27, 2026, after a viral video showed them allegedly looting gold earrings from the body of a flood victim, an act that sparked widespread outrage amid the country's devastating flood disaster. The suspects were identified as Madan Gurung, 25, and Umesh Chaudhary, 38, who were detained near Pokhara Bus Park in Bharatpur Metropolitan City.

The arrests followed the rapid spread of a roughly 40-second video on social media. The footage shows two men approaching the mud-covered body of an unidentified woman carried downstream by floodwaters. They appear to use wooden planks to move the body and are seen pulling it by the hair before removing gold earrings from her ears and placing them aside. Several onlookers, some recording the scene on their phones, are visible nearby. Nepal Police shared a blurred version of the footage, describing the treatment of the deceased as inhumane.

The incident occurred as Nepal grapples with catastrophic flooding and landslides triggered by an ice-rock avalanche near the Nepal-Tibet border. The disaster has killed at least 469 people in Nepal and three in China, with hundreds more reported missing. The floods...