As many as 129 people have died in rain-related incidents, including multiple landslides, in Maharashtra over the last two days, while 84,452 people under the Pune division were shifted to safer places on Friday as heavy showers continued to wreak havoc in the state, officials said.

The deceased included 38 people who perished in a landslide in a village in the coastal Raigad district's Mahad tehsil on Thursday, a senior official from the state disaster management department told PTI.

Eleven people, including eight Nepalese workers, were rescued in the nick of time before the bus in which they were travelling was swept away in a flooded river in Western Maharashtra's Kolhapur district on early Friday morning, police said.

"The death toll in Maharashtra in the last 48 hours has reached 129. Most of the deaths are from Raigad and Satara districts," the official said.

Besides landslides, several people were swept away in floodwaters.

The official put the death toll in various incidents in Western Maharashtra's Satara district at 27.

Other fatalities included those reported from eastern districts such as Gondia and Chandrapur, he said.

The landslide in Raigad district took place near Talai village in Mahad tehsil on Thursday evening. NDRF teams and local officials were engaged in rescue work in Mahad.

Landslides also hit Ambeghar and Mirgaon villages in Satara's Patan tehsil during Thursday night, burying a total of eight houses, said Ajay Kumar Bansal, Superintendent of Police, Satara rural.

But no deaths have been confirmed in the two incidents by local officials so far.

Besides, 10 persons were feared trapped after a landslide in the coastal Ratnagiri district.

Eleven people, including eight Nepalese workers, were rescued in the nick of time before the bus in which they were travelling was swept away in the flooded Chikodi river in Kolhapur district, police said.

The incident took place around 2.30 am at Pangire village in Bhudargad tehsil. A case was registered against the driver of the private bus, Ajit Pardeshi (39), for reckless driving, the police said.

Pardeshi was detained and booked under IPC Section 307 (attempt to murder) for driving on the flooded bridge, they said.

In another incident in the wee hours of Friday, a Ratnagiri-bound bus of the Karnataka government's transport service got stranded in water on Kolhapur-Panhala road. As many as 25 passengers were safely evacuated, the police said.

Source: tribuneindia.com 

BDST: 1346 HRS, JUL 24, 2021
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