A man and his teenage daughter died while two other family members were injured on Wednesday when a boulder loosened by a landslide fell on their house in Vasai city in Maharashtra’s Palghar district amid rains, officials said.
Local firemen and a team of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) rushed to the spot and launched a rescue operation.
“Following the landslide, a boulder from a hillock landed on the house of Anil Singh (45) at Waghralpada in Rajavali area of Vasai around 6.30 am,” said District Disaster Management Cell chief Vivekanand Kadam.
The man and his daughter Roshni Singh (16) died, he said.
Anil Singh’s wife Vandana Singh (40) and son Om Singh (12) got trapped under the debris. Some locals and firemen later pulled them out and they were admitted to a hospital, he said.
Anil Singh’s body was retrieved from the debris around 10.30 am and that of his daughter at about 1 pm, the official said.
The search operation was later suspended and work was on to clear debris, Palghar Collector Dr Manik Gursal said.
The district, located about 100 km from the state capital Mumbai, has been witnessing very heavy rains since Tuesday night which caused water logging in many low-lying areas.
Following the landslide, at least 40 families in the neighbourhood of Waghralpada have been shifted to safer places amid the possibility of a similar tragedy, with the help of personnel of the Vasai Virar civic body, NDRF, and local volunteers. The police have appealed to people to remain alert.
Earlier in the day, the NDRF team had to walk the distance of about a kilometre in heavy rains from the main road to reach the spot of the landslide, as there is no motorable road to reach the crash site.
A jawan of the 20-member NRDF team said they located a body buried in debris with the help of a dog squad and retrieved it after the debris were removed by a JCB machine.
Palghar district Resident Collector Kiran Mahajan, who is also CEO of the Palghar district Disaster Management Authority, has submitted a report on the landslide to the state government and said provisions are made for paying compensation to the deceased and injured as per the state policy.
Some trees collapsed on Wednesday on a section of the busy Mumbai-Ahmedabad highway in Palghar where a pipeline laying work was underway, an official had said.
