22 killed in Bihar monsoon fury; red alert for more rain

PATNA: Bihar bore the brunt of a monsoon on overdrive in the past 24 hours, with at least 22 deaths being reported from across the state amid an IMD red alert for further heavy to very heavy rain on Monday.
Four autorickshaw passengers were killed when the branch of a tree fell on the vehicle at Khagaul in Patna. At least 14 of the deaths since Saturday were caused by brick walls collapsing on the victims in Gaya and Bhagalpur.Three persons drowned in Nawada district while a six-year-old was crushed to death in Begusarai district after her house collapsed in the middle of a downpour.
In Uttar Pradesh, rain-related accidents claimed 16 lives as several districts received a pounding from the cloud-heavy skies for the fourth consecutive day.
Bihar’s monsoon misery was all-pervasive, not sparing even the VIPs and upscale residential colonies. Justice Madhuresh Prasad of the Patna high court and his family had to be rescued from Patna’s flooded Kadamkuan neighbourhood on a lifeboat. The emergency operation centre of the disaster management department and the district control room received distress calls from marooned Patna residents through the night, including an Army colonel and a fellow officer stranded on Road No 11 at Rajendra Nagar.
CM Nitish Kumar held a review meeting on Sunday afternoon in the wake of the IMD warning that the worst may not be over for Bihar.
East Central Railway cancelled at least 13 long-distance and an equal number of passenger trains, besides diverting 20 more passing through the Danapur division. Two Patna-bound flights were diverted to Lucknow and Varanasi because of low visibility.
In Gujarat, two women drowned and another was reported missing after their car was swept away by the raging current of the Rasnal river near Rajkot on Sunday. Four fishermen were feared dead after a boat capsized mid-sea off Nava Bandar near Una in Gir Somnath on Sunday. Pune also continued to reel under the impact of flash floods, with the toll going up to 17.
(Inputs from Lucknow, Rajkot and Pune)