A couple wails over the body of their eight-year-old son in Cuddalore. (PTI)

Machilipatnam, Dec. 27: The sea returns its dead.

Wave after wave tossed back bodies of men and women the sea had swallowed yesterday as anxious relatives huddled in groups, still holding on to fading hope.

Munginapudi beach, 15 km from Machilipatnam and some 325 km from Andhra Pradesh?s capital Hyderabad, was littered with carcasses. In between the dead, chappals, clothes, bags, towels and food packets lay strewn on the five-kilometre stretch of sand.

?Most of the bodies are decomposed and can be recognised only by their clothes. The police and administration are handing over bodies to relatives with perfunctory procedures,? said a police official.

Witnesses recalled the giant waves that kept coming in. ?It all happened before my eyes and within 10 minutes,? said Nagesh, a resident of Machilipatnam who was among the hundreds who had come for the holy dip yesterday that soon turned into a death trap.

As crying mothers and wives waited on the beach and fathers tried hard to hold back the tears, Nagesh blamed officials who stopped relatives from saving their kin. ?We could see people being dragged away by the waves and making an attempt to swim back. But the police and officials did not allow us to go into the sea. Nor did they send any swimmer or help to those being swept away,? he said.

Five kilometres away, two more bodies had washed up in a creek near Pedakanur. The bodies were of two women, one of them a teenager. Venkatalakshmi, 31, and 18-year-old China Appalamma had gone with lunchboxes for their brothers who had set off on their fishing boats after midnight and were due to come back early with their haul as well as for food. ?The brothers returned home with a basketful of fish and crabs, but their sisters were caught in the tsunami,? said Gangayya, a village elder from Pedakanur.

?What has happened was very unusual. People did not have time to think and act. Even before they realised they were drowning and made an effort to escape, they were swamped by yet another bigger wave,? said relief officer B.R. Meena.

As the wall of water raced inland, it submerged over 25 fishing villages and destroyed crops ? rice, tobacco and whatever lay in its path. Over 1,500 acres of shrimp farms went under the salty deluge.

The worst hit was a Rs 2-crore tourist complex at the beach that had three cottages, a restaurant and an entertainment wing. A two-tonne lorry lay stuck in the beach, its nose buried in the sand. The waves also took away over a thousand mechanised boats and catamarans.