Some opportunists took advantage of the tumult. With the huge crowds and local reporters pressing forward, officials were sometimes reluctant to challenge someone who claimed a body. In at least two cases, officials handed over bodies as well as initial payments of 20,000 taka, or about $250, to people who pocketed the cash and dumped the corpses at the edge of the school grounds.

“It was a crisis,” Mr. Harun said. “There could have been a riot. Some officials had to hand over a body.”

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has announced a compensation package for families of those killed at Rana Plaza that could exceed $12,000, with the money coming from public and private sources. The amount is substantial, given that the minimum wage in the garment industry is $37 a month. Yet so far, only 150 families have received the first installment of about $1,100, according to Mr. Harun, prompting criticism that the government is purposely making it difficult for people to claim the money.

Such disputes over compensation are still dragging on from the fire in November that destroyed the Tazreen Fashions garment factory and killed 112 workers who had been making clothing for brands that included Walmart and Sears. One problem for families is merely proving that a relative worked in a factory: at Tazreen, just outside Dhaka, the flames that consumed many victims also destroyed their identification tags. And in the Rana Plaza collapse, rumors have swirled of bodies disappearing after being whisked away in trucks, prompting the leader of the political opposition to accuse the government of a cover-up.

“In Rana Plaza, we suspect the death toll is much higher,” said Jyotirmoy Barua, a lawyer who has been working with victims of the Tazreen Fashions and Rana Plaza disasters. “The only reason for lowering the number is to lower the compensation.”

But such accusations have been sharply rebutted by the government, and many others note that any coordinated effort to hide bodies would have been difficult, given the thousands of people who had rushed to the disaster site, including dozens of journalists filming every development.