BHOPAL: Continued heavy rains in Madhya Pradesh are causing flooding in rivers, rain-fed nullahs and house collapses, killing at least eight people in just two days.
On Saturday, an elderly couple died when their makeshift hut in the Burhar area of Shahdol district collapsed amid heavy rains. The elderly couple, identified as Jawaharlal Mahra (~70) and his spouse Maniya Mahra (~65), were surprisingly living in a makeshift hut built right outside their pucca PM Awas Yojana house.
In the adjoining Anuppur district of eastern MP, a family of four were swept away along with their car by a flooded nullah in Kirar Ghat area on the Amarkantak-Rewa Road on Sunday evening.
“The incident happened at around 6.30 pm when a sudden surge of rain water in the nullah swept the car stuck on the culvert. The search operations by the State Disaster and Emergency Response Force (SDERF) team started in the night only and led to the recovery of the woman’s body. The search operation was restarted in the morning, resulting in recovery of husband’s body in the morning followed by retrieving of the bodies of the two kids, including an eight-year-old boy and a year-and-half old girl, a few hours later,” sub divisional officer police (SDOP-Anuppur) Sumit Karketa said.
The man, aged around 40, has been identified as Chandrashekhar Yadav, an employee of the South Eastern Coalfields Limited (SECL), while his wife Priti Yadav was a staff nurse at the Anuppur District Hospital.
Just when the tragic incident happened in the rain fed nullah in eastern MP’s Anuppur district on Sunday evening, two youths from Rajasthan’s Kota district drowned in the backwaters of Gandhi Sagar Dam located in western MP’s Mandsaur district.
According to Mandsaur police sources, seven youths had arrived from Kota (Rajasthan) for a picnic in the backwaters of the Dam in Kanwala, which is nicknamed as Mini Goa. Two of the youths identified as Sonu and Chetan, aged between 20 and 25 years, drowned in the deep waters.
Sustained efforts by the SDERF personnel, resulted in the recovery of the two bodies on Monday morning.
Importantly, the two youths who drowned had gone into the deep waters with car tubes. Some locals had allegedly provided car tubes to picnickers to venture into deep waters; police have launched a probe into this matter as well.