Kathmandu, Sept. 5 -- For 10 days since the floods, her whereabouts remained a complete mystery. Her relatives had all but abandoned hope of her return. On the eighth day, they started performing her death rituals. The family fashioned an effigy out of kush grass to represent her body and began the solemn rituals.

But on Saturday, the 11th day after the deadly disaster, footage began circulating showing a frail woman being carried alive, out of the sludge from a flood-ravaged house in Betrawati, the historic market town in Nuwakot.

Chandika Shrestha, 64, a resident of Betrawati in Bidur Municipality-10, had gone missing alongside four members of her family on August 26, when the flash floods tore through the Bhotekoshi river basin, deci...