Missing after the Trishuli flood: claiming life insurance, bank deposits and SSF when there is no death certificate

In Nuwakot last week a priest made straw effigies of Mukunda Rijal's missing cousins and their daughters, arranged them with the wood, and set them alight. In Salyan, Pramila Budhathoki was cremated as a कुशको पुतला, her youngest son giving दागबत्ती. Her husband had died of COVID; there was no body for either.

The families have accepted what happened. The state has not, and will not until a court says so. That gap is where insurance policies, bank balances and pension entitlements sit right now for several thousand households.

First, which flood this is

Naming matters here because the reporting split. NDRRMA's own situation report describes one event across the Bhote Koshi, Trishuli and Narayani river corridor, from the Tibet border down through Rasuwa, Nuwakot, Dhading, Gorkha, Chitwan, Tanahun and Nawalparasi. Some coverage calls it the Rasuwa-Nuwakot flood, some the Bhote Koshi flood, some the Trishuli flood. It is one wave, on 10 Bhadau 2083 (26 August 2026), triggered by an ice and rock avalanche roughly 20 km upstream of Rasuwagadhi.

The wave reached Galchhi at 10:28, Malekhu at 11:50, Mugling at 13:00 and Devghat at 15:20, peaking at Devghat at 5,850 cubic metres per second. NDRRMA's first situation report counted 987 bodies recovered and 3,916 people reported missing across 62 districts. Nepal Police's own count on 21 Bhadau stood at 1,341 bodies and 4,044 people out of contact, of which 493 of the recovered were in an unidentifiable condition. The numbers move daily and the two agencies do not match. Quote a figure with its date and its issuing agency, never an average of the two.

If the question is about a damaged house, a vehicle or a business rather than a person, that is a different claim entirely and it is covered in how to file a flood insurance claim after this disaster.

The document everything is keyed to

The chain is short and it has one blocked link.

The Home Ministry puts the first link in writing. The District Administration Office Baitadi's published death-registration FAQ asks whether a missing citizen's death can be registered, and answers: "कोही नागरिक बेपत्ता भएमा मुलुकी देवानी संहिता, २०७४ को दफा ४० बमोजिमको न्यायिक मृत्यु घोषणाको प्रमाण पेश गरेपछि मृत्यु दर्ता गर्न सकिन्छ।" Produce the judicial declaration, then register.

The registration Act itself is no help. The word बेपत्ता does not appear once in the Birth, Death and Other Personal Events (Compulsory Registration) Act 2033. What it does give you is the ordinary machinery: 35 days from the event to notify the local registrar, a Rs 50 fee if you are late, the certificate itself free, and Section 9 making that certificate proof of the event in any office or court.

Then नाता प्रमाणित, which every institution below asks for. Ramechhap Municipality publishes its checklist for the post-death version: Rs 210, one day after the सर्जमिन, and it requires "मृतकको मृत्यु दर्ता प्रमाण पत्रको सक्कल र प्रतिलिपि" along with all heirs physically present. Fees vary by palika, the death certificate requirement does not.

Section 40: twelve years, and the exception nobody has tested

Civil Code Section 40(1) is the default. A person who disappears without notice for twelve consecutive years, or about whom someone who would naturally have news has had none for twelve years, is deemed dead. The proviso shortens that in exactly three cases: five years for a person over eighty, four years after a war ends for a soldier sent to the front, and three years for a person caught in an accident to a "वायुयान, पानी जहाज वा अन्य सवारी साधन", an aircraft, ship or other conveyance, that they were travelling in.

Read that third clause against this flood. Two things in the Nepali narrow it: सवारी साधन is the statutory term for a conveyance rather than a general word for circumstances, and the operative participle यात्रा गरेको requires the person to have been aboard the thing that had the accident. A person swept out of a house in Rasuwa, off a road in Dhading, or out of a hydropower tunnel is neither. The three-year clause does not reach them. On the Trishuli it reaches exactly one cohort: the passengers of the two buses swept in at Simaltal in July 2024, of whom 43 were never found. Their three-year clock expires in July 2027.

Section 40(4) is the provision that should matter more. It lets a concerned person petition the court stating that someone has disappeared or died due to a disaster or accident, disclosing the date, place, cause and grounds, and empowers the court to examine the evidence and make a judicial declaration of death. It names disasters. It sets no waiting period, and the contrast is deliberate: the drafters wrote explicit periods into Section 40(1) and wrote none into Section 40(4). The word it uses, विपद्, is the same term of art defined in the Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Act 2074, whose definition covers floods.

One more sub-section deserves attention because it is the one that may do real work here. Section 40(2) says that where a person has died in an accident and no evidence is received that another person caught in the same accident is alive, that second person is deemed to have died at the same time. It expressly overrides the three-year conveyance clause. In a disaster where some bodies from a household or a worksite have been recovered and others have not, that is a direct statutory route to a same-moment death for the missing, and it does not wait on any period.

Here is the honest problem: nothing confirms a district court will use Section 40(4) that way. The only court practitioner on record, Rolpa District Court registrar Prem Khadka, described the caseload in terms of the long rule: petitions come in "बाह्र वर्षभन्दा बढी समयदेखि बेपत्ता भएकाहरुलाई", for people missing more than twelve years. His court saw three such petitions in FY 2077/78 and eight in the following year to Chaitra. No reported case law, no Supreme Court precedent and no court practice note resolves whether Section 40(4) can be used within weeks of a named disaster. A family filing now is filing into that uncertainty, which is an argument for filing early rather than waiting to see.

Section 40(5) is not discretionary. Where the declared-dead person returns alive, or an heir shows the death happened on a different date, the court shall amend or annul the declaration after inquiry. Four protections then sit in the proviso, and the best known is only the first: a wife who has remarried is not returned to the first marriage. The other three preserve the returned person's legal rights, the acts already done under the earlier declaration, and third-party rights arising from those acts. A challenge to a Section 40(5) action runs out one year from the day the challenger learned of it, under Section 41(b).

The disaster law never mentions the missing

You would expect the Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Act 2074 to close this. It does not. The word बेपत्ता appears zero times in it. Its relief architecture, Section 39, directs the Government to set minimum relief standards covering, among other things, "विपद्बाट मृत्यु हुनेको परिवार", the families of those who die. There is no category for the missing.

Which means the decision has to be made politically rather than found in the statute, and a sitting minister said as much on 5 September. Koshi Province Internal Affairs and Law Minister Gombu Sherpa:

"कानुनी रूपमा बेपत्ता नागरिकलाई मृतकसरह मान्यता दिएर उहाँहरूका परिवारलाई राहत उपलब्ध गराउन सङ्घीय मन्त्रिपरिषद्को निर्णय आवश्यक पर्छ।"

He described taking the matter to the federal cabinet through NDRRMA and the Home Ministry, and said the families would receive relief on the same footing as other victims' families "सङ्घीय सरकारले औपचारिक निर्णय गरेलगत्तै", as soon as the federal government formally decides. As of the day this was published, that is a request, not a decision.

What the state did build instead is forensic. District Administration Office Chitwan is burying unidentified bodies at Devghat with permanent visible identification numbers after forensic examination and DNA sampling, so that a later match can identify a body from the record. DNA collection from relatives started on Bhadau 16; by Bhadau 20 the district police in Chitwan had sampled 68 relatives, against 362 bodies found there. That is the fastest available route out of this problem for any individual family, and it does not require a lawyer.

Life insurance: a register with no life claims in it

The single most telling document in this whole story is a statistical notice. On 1 September the Nepal Insurance Authority published its claim tally for the flood, current to Bhadau 15. It lists 583 claims worth Rs 25.87 billion, broken down by class:

Every insurer named is non-life or micro. Sixteen days after a flood that left several thousand people missing, the life column is empty. Not because life cover excludes floods, but because a life claim needs a death certificate and nobody has one.

The regulator's own documents show why. Insurance Regulations 2081 Rule 90(3) sets the claim document list at four items: claim details, the death registration certificate, a post-mortem report where death was accidental "र सो नभए प्रहरी प्रतिवेदन" (and where that is not available, a police report), and the relationship certificate. The post-mortem is explicitly substitutable. The death registration certificate is not.

Two more things worth knowing before filing. Insurance Act 2079 Section 127 puts the nominee first and the legal heir behind them. And Section 128(4) makes delay expensive for the insurer: on a complaint to the Authority, it can order the sum insured plus 10 percent interest running from the date of complaint, plus actual legal costs. Interest runs from when you complain, not from when the insurer started stalling, so a delayed complaint is money given away. Appeal from an Authority decision goes to the High Court within 35 days.

On the settlement clock, the two primary texts disagree and it is worth knowing both: the Regulations give 15 days to determine liability and 3 working days to pay after consent, while the Claim Payment Guideline 2081 gives 15 days to determine and a further 15 to pay. No primary text says 30 days, whatever an agent tells you. The full document set and the ordinary settlement path is a separate post if the death is registered.

The case where the regulator paid without a body

Precedent exists, and it is worth naming in a letter to your insurer.

Bishnu Bahadur Bist held a three-year Rs 10 lakh foreign-employment term policy from Prime Life. On 15 Bhadau 2076 he fell from a cliff into a river in Lungri Rural Municipality-6, Rolpa. The body was never found. His wife Rojika Bist produced an area police office letter and a rural municipality recommendation, and the Foreign Employment Board had already paid her Rs 7 lakh on that same evidence. Prime Life still refused. She filed complaint number 501 with the regulator on 11 Shrawan 2078, and the order came on 9 Bhadau 2079:

"निजको शव फेला नपरेको भन्ने आधार र कारणले मात्र बीमितको मृत्यु भएको तथ्यलाई इन्कार गर्नु न्यायसंगत तथा तर्कसंगत देखिन नआएबाट..."

Refusing the claim on the sole ground that the body was not found is neither just nor reasonable. Three points make that decision useful rather than merely encouraging: the evidence accepted was a police letter plus a local government recommendation, another state body had already paid on the same facts, and the whole thing still took just over a year from complaint to order. If an insurer refuses, the complaint ladder from branch to the Authority is the route, and the Authority takes complaints at info@nia.gov.np and gunaso@nia.gov.np.

One caution the research could not resolve: no Nepali life policy wording was available to check whether natural disaster is excluded under a standard endowment or term product. Ask your insurer for the exclusion clause in writing rather than assuming either way.

Bank deposits: nothing freezes, nothing releases

The controlling law is not an NRB directive but BAFIA Section 111. On a depositor's death, the first claim belongs to the person nominated. Where there is no nominee, or the nominee has also died, the statute itself supplies a nine-rung ladder of heirs, and at every rung the सगोल (undivided household) relative outranks the भिन्न बसेको (separated) one. No succession certificate is named anywhere in it.

For a family whose relative is missing rather than confirmed dead, the practical position has an odd shape. Nothing freezes the account, because freezing is a controlled act that reaches banks only through NRB's authenticated portal and a family cannot trigger it. But nothing releases it either, because the bank is being asked to treat a living account holder as dead. What actually happens is drift: under NRB's Unified Directive 16/082, a savings account goes dormant after three years without transactions, a call or current account after one, and reactivation requires an application from the account holder.

The reassuring number is the long one. Only a zero-balance account is closed at the ten-year mark. An account with money in it is reported to NRB at ten years, carries a public notice every five years, and only at twenty years does the balance move to NRB's Banking Development Fund. A family that cannot get a court order this year has not lost the money. Banks may also charge nothing to open, operate, close or reactivate an account, and may not debit it for falling below minimum balance, so an untouched account should not be bleeding fees.

Two gaps worth naming honestly. BAFIA Section 111 lists no documents at all, and NRB's directive delegates deposit payment rules to each bank, so the exact paperwork is bank-by-bank rather than national. And no Nepali bank checked publishes a deceased-depositor claim checklist online, which is a real transparency problem. Deposits remain guaranteed to Rs 5 lakh per natural-person depositor per member institution under the DCGF scheme regardless. The ordinary process, once a certificate exists, is in what to do with money when someone dies.

SSF: the only fund that mentions the problem

Section 14(2) of the Contribution Based Social Security Act 2074 is the sole provision in any of the three funds that contemplates this situation. It covers a contributor who has died "वा प्रचलित कानूनमा तोकिएको अवधिसम्म पनि जीवित रहेको यकिन नभएमा", whose survival cannot be confirmed within the period specified in prevailing law, and directs the benefit to the nominee or the dependent family.

Then it hands the problem straight back. "The period specified in prevailing law" is Civil Code Section 40. SSF runs no clock of its own, the word बेपत्ता appears nowhere in its Act, Regulations or operating directive, and while the clause exists in the Act there is no implementing provision, no form and no document list behind it. The live dependant claim form has hard fields for date of death and cause of death, and asks for a copy of the death registration as item one.

What is waiting on the other side of that door, under the fifth amendment to the operating procedure:

Two details that trip families up. The percentages are computed on the average of the last twelve months' basic actually deposited, not on a headline salary. And the fifth amendment added Section 14क(2), a qualifying bar: unless the death was रोजगारीजन्य, employment-related, the contributor must have made at least twelve months of regular contributions for the benefit to start. A flood death away from the workplace is not employment-related, so the twelve-month bar applies. The heir separately receives the whole 28.33 percent old-age pot with returns. More on how the scheme is built in what SSF actually pays for.

CIT and EPF: cover that names floods, deadlines that outrun the family

The Citizen Investment Trust's accident scheme is the cruellest arithmetic in this whole story, because it covers exactly this event and then times out.

Its कर्मचारी बचत वृद्धि अवकाश कोष procedure pays Rs 2 lakh for accidental death, and its definition of दुर्घटना explicitly includes "बाढी पहिरोमा परेर", being caught in flood or landslide, and दैवी विपत्ति generally. Then the exclusions: nothing is paid if membership is under two years, if no contribution was made in the six months before the accident, or "मृत्यु वा अङ्गभङ्ग भएको मितिले एक वर्ष भित्र दुर्घटना क्षतिपूर्ति रकम माग दावी पेश नगरेमा", if the claim is not filed within one year of the date of death. A family that cannot legally establish a date of death is being asked to file within a year of it. CIT's funeral grant of Rs 30,000 runs on an even shorter three-month clock. The document list includes the death registration certificate, and the word बेपत्ता appears nowhere in the 22-page procedure.

EPF is no softer. Nomination governs under Section 15क of the Employees Provident Fund Act 2019, with the अपुताली heir behind it, and there is no missing-person analogue in the 33-page Act. Its funeral grant is Rs 40,000. Its accidental death cover is Rs 2 lakh, requires at least three months of regular contribution, and asks for thirteen documents including a police-certified accident report, a पोष्टमार्टम रिपोर्ट and a death registration certificate. No body, no autopsy, and the form carries no waiver. The ordinary release process for both balances is in how to withdraw a CIT or PF balance.

Relief, and the twenty-two police families

Government relief for a disaster death has been running at Rs 200,000 per person, stated by Home Ministry spokesperson Rishiram Tiwari when 238 families were paid Rs 4.76 crore after the Asoj 2081 floods. Provincial and local top-ups sit on top and vary: Koshi Province announced Rs 100,000 per family through the DAO, Madhesh Province Rs 100,000 per citizen killed, Kohalpur Municipality Rs 50,000 as काजकिरिया खर्च, and the Armed Police Force Rs 2.5 million to families of on-duty staff killed. Every one of those announcements is worded for the dead.

The sharpest illustration is inside Nepal Police itself. A police family whose member is confirmed killed receives roughly Rs 20.4 lakh in total: Rs 3 lakh from the Welfare Fund, Rs 40,000 funeral, Rs 5 lakh insurance through Rastriya Banijya Bank, Rs 2 lakh from Rastriya Beema Sansthan and Rs 10 lakh organisational relief. Twenty-five police personnel are missing in this flood and three bodies have been found. Three families can claim that package today. Twenty-two cannot, and the difference between them is not what happened but what was recovered.

Whether relief has ever in fact been paid to a missing person's family in Nepal could not be verified in any published source, including for Simaltal. Treat claims that it has been as unconfirmed until the cabinet decision Minister Sherpa described actually lands.

If the missing person was a migrant worker

The Foreign Employment Welfare Fund pays Rs 10 lakh on a migrant worker's death, raised from Rs 7 lakh by a 2024 amendment to the Rules. The Board's own published counter demands two things a missing worker's family can never produce: "शव बुझेको भन्सारको कागज", the customs paper for receipt of the body, and the death registration certificate, with the application due within one year of the body arriving in Nepal. Two clocks, both keyed to events that do not occur.

There is no missing-worker benefit anywhere in the Board's published directives. What the Fund does pay for is searching, NPR 34.2 million on rescue and search in 2023/24. The compulsory insurance sits separately and is covered in the two systems every migrant worker pays into.

This is not a new problem, only a newly visible one. A 2017 survey across seven far-western municipalities found 209 men missing in India, some for 25 years. Kalawati BK of Doti, whose husband had been gone 14 years, could draw neither the single-woman allowance nor his share of the family property: "I have heard that you can make a death certificate of a person if he has not been in contact for more than 12 years. But I am not ready to believe that he is dead."

What to do this month

Four things do not require a death certificate and should not wait on one.

1. File the police report. The record has to exist before anything is built on it, and a police letter was one of the two documents that carried the Bist case.
2. Give a DNA sample at your district police office. This is the only route that can convert a missing person into an identified body, and bodies are being buried with permanent numbers and DNA on record precisely so that later matches work.
3. Search the official databases. Nepal Police runs a searchable unidentified-bodies register for this disaster, with roughly 1,300 records showing registration number, estimated age, where and when the body was found and where it is held now, plus a national missing-persons register. Both are cited in NDRRMA's own situation report. Their TLS certificate chain is broken, so a browser may warn.
4. Talk to the free lawyer. Every district court posts a वैतनिक वकिल, a stipendiary lawyer, with a public phone number on the Supreme Court's site. A Section 40(4) petition has to state date, place, cause and grounds, and drafting it is exactly what that office is for. No court fee figure or realistic timeline for these petitions is published, so ask there rather than budgeting a guess.

The Finance Minister told insurers on 16 Bhadau to make claim payment easy, and the Authority adopted six measures: priority for large claims, wide procedural facilitation, interim पेस्की payments before full assessment, blanket consent and automatic surveyor assignment, and a special task force for daily monitoring. Read the list and notice what is in it. Surveyors, advances, property assessment. Nothing about death claims, death certificates or missing persons. As of publication the Authority has issued no circular or directive on any of those.

What you actually need to know

One court order unlocks everything, and Section 40(4) of the Civil Code is the provision to file under, because it names disasters and sets no waiting period even though the twelve-year default is what courts are used to seeing. File early rather than waiting for the federal cabinet to decide whether the missing count as dead, since that decision was still only a provincial request in early September. And give the DNA sample this month, because identifying a body is the one route that removes the legal problem entirely instead of arguing around it.

If you are trying to work out which of these institutions to approach first for a specific case, email parjanya57@gmail.com.

This post is part of the Nepal Money Basics guide — the Protect what you've saved section.