Her family was performing her last rites. Then, rescuers heard a faint voice in mud
After Nepal’s deadly August 26 floods, 64-year-old Chandrika Shrestha’s family had given up hope. Then rescuers heard her voice beneath the mud and found her alive.
Chandrika Shrestha, 64, rescued from fourth floor of flood-hit house. (Photo: AP/X/@NepalPoliceHQ)
On September 5, an Armed Police Force team searching the devastated Betrawati area heard a woman’s voice coming from a collapsed, mud-covered house. Police officer Mahendra Darnal told news agency Reuters that rescuers heard her call for help and began digging towards the sound.
The four-storey house had been swept away by the floods and left surrounded by mud and debris. Much of the building was buried, with only the upper portion remaining accessible. Local reports identified the survivor as 64-year-old Chandrika Shrestha.
Rescuers found her alive in a confined space, with part of her body buried in mud. Reuters reported that she had survived in a narrow pocket of air amid water and mud.
The rescue took about 45 minutes. Shrestha was able to speak and was later airlifted to an Army hospital in Kathmandu for treatment.
The rescue was especially striking because her family had already begun the traditional 11-day mourning period, believing she had died in the floods.
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How was she found?
On the 11th day, footage emerged showing Shrestha being carried from mud and debris in Betrawati. An Armed Police Force team, originally sent to the area for road works, reported hearing faint cries near the buried house and began clearing the sludge by hand, breaking through a window to reach her, the Kathmandu Post reported. Rescuers said the floodwaters had shifted the structure roughly 100 metres uphill, burying three and a half storeys and leaving only the top floor partly clear.
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Nepal Floods · Survivor Story
11 days trapped under flood debris
How Chandrika Shrestha was found alive
AI-generated illustration of the rescue, a dramatisation. The real photo of Chandrika Shrestha shown inset is genuine. Photo: Nepal Police / PTI
Who
Chandrika Shrestha, 64
A resident of Betrawati, Nuwakot (Bidur Municipality–10)
Where
A four-storey house
Her home was heavily damaged and buried under mud and debris after the August 26 Bhotekoshi floods.
The breakthrough
Rescuers heard her voice
An Armed Police Force team clearing flood-damaged houses in Betrawati Bazaar heard a woman's voice coming from inside the debris. They followed the sound.
Where they found her
Fourth floor
Shrestha was found alive, unconscious and partly trapped in mud.
What happened next
Freed → First aid → Helicopter evacuation
She was given preliminary treatment before being flown to the Nepal Army's Maithili Barracks in Trishuli. She was to be taken onward to Kathmandu if further treatment was required, per Nepal's Prime Minister's Office.
The extraordinary detail
Her family had lost hope
Some local reports say her family had already begun last rites, believing she was dead, before rescuers found her alive.
This specific detail comes from local reporting and could not be independently corroborated via official statements at the time of publishing.
AUG 26
Floods hit
→
SEARCH
Days of rescue operations
→
DAY 11
A voice is heard
→
RESCUED
Chandrika found alive
Part of a wider disaster: as of Sept 5, 2026, Nepal's confirmed flood toll stood at 1,344 dead, including 85 children, with nearly 4,900 people still missing.
Relatives told the paper they had travelled to the hospital once news of the rescue reached them, and struggled to believe she had survived. Shrestha was airlifted to Birendra Hospital in Kathmandu for treatment.
What happened to the rest of her family?
Her brother-in-law, Ishwari Lal Shrestha, escaped the same house but remains without news of his wife, sister and aunt, who are still missing, the Post reported. He told the paper that he had woken his wife after receiving an early flood warning, but that she stayed behind to finish her morning prayers before he became occupied with customers at his shop. He said he briefly lost consciousness after watching the house collapse into the floodwaters, and that nothing remained when he regained his senses minutes later.
मिति २०८३ भदौ २० गते नेपाल प्रहरी र सशस्त्र प्रहरी बल नेपालको संयुक्त टोलीले जिल्ला नुवाकोट विदुर १० वेत्रावतीबाट १ जना महिलालाई सकुशल उद्धार गरेको छ । pic.twitter.com/7St1H9bknq
Meanwhile, police used drone footage to locate and recover further bodies from the surrounding mud, according to the report.
What happened at the hydropower tunnels?
In a second rescue described by the Post, the Nepali Army, working with a South Korean rescue team, freed a Chinese national from roughly 225 metres inside a tunnel at the Upper Trishuli-I Hydropower Project in Rasuwa. The survivor, named as Lu Haitao, reportedly communicated with rescuers through translation software after his phone battery had drained, and was flown to Kathmandu for treatment. Two bodies were also recovered from the same tunnel complex, the paper said.
The Post also reported that two other workers had been pulled from 170 metres inside a tunnel at the nearby Upper Trishuli 3A project a day earlier, with a tunnel-rescue specialist noting that people can survive underground for longer than typically expected.
Close to 1,340 people have been confirmed dead and nearly 5,000 remain missing since the floods, described as Nepal’s worst disaster in a decade. Around 1,000 people are unaccounted for across hydropower project sites in Rasuwa alone, and more than 21,000 army, police and armed police personnel have been deployed to the affected districts for search and recovery work.
A related dispatch, citing Armed Police Force officials and a spokesperson for the Prime Minister’s office, gave a slightly different sequence for Shrestha’s rescue, placing it on the Friday before the above report and identifying the officer in charge as Inspector Suman BK of the Armed Police Force, working under Deputy Superintendent Birendra Raut.
In this account, Shrestha was located on the fourth floor of the house, found unconscious and partly trapped in mud, and given initial treatment before being flown by helicopter to the Nepal Army’s Maithili Barracks in Trishuli, with officials saying she would be moved to Kathmandu for further care if needed.
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Chandrika Shrestha, 64, rescued from fourth floor of flood-hit house. (Photo: AP/X/@NepalPoliceHQ) 
