Aleena’s soiled notebooks and a heartrending note of rescue personnel from Kavalappara landslide

“In the initial days of the rescue operation at Kavalappara, a moment that moistened our eyes was when we saw the body of little Aleena, in a sleeping state, under a concrete pillar inside the room of her house. She had lost the hold of her father’s hand and the hill had come crumbling down on her house,” the post read.

It continued, “To locate 11 more missing persons, when we reached the spot where Aleena’s body was discovered for a final round of search operation, that’s when we discovered her notebooks that would never get back its owner. When we return home today after concluding the search operation, that name and those notebooks are adding to the weight on our hearts.”

The heartrending sight has found its way onto a Facebook post on the official page of the Kerala Fire and Rescue Services, who worked doggedly to excavate remains of missing people

The Facebook post is accompanied with photographs of Aleena’s notebooks and the moment when her body was fished out of the landslide site.

On Tuesday, with the permission of the kin of 11 missing people, the district administration suspended search operations after it became clear that more bodies would be difficult to unearth. Intermittent rain and a fast-flowing stream near the edge of the hill had made the debris slippery. Any more bodies, if present, would only be found in the deepest layers of the debris. Till Tuesday, 48 bodies were taken out from the Kavalappara site in one of Kerala’s biggest landslide tragedies.