Bhagalpur: The state disaster response force on Thursday recovered a body near the spot where floodwaters washed away a 100m road, an SUV and an autorickshaw and the deceased was identified as Raghopur resident Bajrangi Sahni on Friday.

Officials had initially suspected that Sahni was in the SUV that was washed away along with a stretch of Road No. 14, connecting Janawhabi Chak with Naugachia. His family rejected that he had been in the vehicle.

"The family members ruled out the possibility of Bajrangi Sahni being in the SUV. He was coming from his in-laws' house in Katihar where his wife unwell and was alone. They say how could he have been in the SUV that slipped into water and disappeared," Naugachia superintendent of police Nidhi Rani quoted the family members as saying on Friday.

The disaster response team which has been searching for the two vehicles have not yet been able to locate them. Rani said: "The SDRF team has yet been unable to recover the vehicles, but they are continuing with the search operation for the third consecutive day."

In another case, Bhagalpur district magistrate Pranav Kumar refused to put the father-son duo - run over by the Rajdhani Express on Thursday - in the casualty list of flood victims.

"How can the duo be treated as flood victims?" he said at a news meet on Friday.

Naugachia social activist Lallan Kumar, however, said Ramesh Singh and his infant son Dilkush are floods victims displaced from Sahora village. "They had taken shelter next to the railway tracks as it was the best option before them so far as higher ground was concerned. The father and son were run over when they were crossing the tracks with firewood. The family didn't have any food for the last 2-3 days, so they had set out to get some food grains. Now the district administration is refusing to admit them as flood victims but what were the circumstances behind the death?" Lallan said.

District magistrate Pranav said the administration had arranged for relief camps near flood-prone localities and food was being provided from Friday.

"Due to the floods at Ismailpur, the block office and circle office have been temporarily shifted to the Naugachia sub-divisional headquarters. But we have arranged for medical camps and also asked government schoolteachers to take classes on higher ground to keep the students engaged," he said.