Early monsoon's heavy rains claim 81 lives in India

New Delhi : According the reports, heavy rains of early monsoon that have hit India, have taken the lives of at least 81 people in India’s western Gujarat state, bringing misery to thousands of people uprooted from their flooded homes, said an official.

A National Disaster Response Force official, Ridhi Butt, said on Friday that, "Nearly 9,000 people have been evacuated to higher ground in the worst-hit rural areas of Amreli, Rajkot and Bhavnagar districts of Gujarat, which had been suffering from a drought before the rains hit."

Butt said that, most of the people were killed when they swept away by flood waters and mudslides, or buried in collapsed houses. More than 1,000 Hindu pilgrims have been stranded on the mountain paths who were on the way of their pilgrimage to Hindu shrines of Kedarnath and Badrinath in northern Uttarakhand state because of the early monsoon's heavy rains.

The state disaster response force and police are clearing the roads to restore the pilgrimage, PTI reported. The Defence ministry said on Thursday that air force helicopters carried out 23 sorties to drop food packets to those stranded.

Mumbai was badly hit last week when torrential showers closed trains and led to a breakdown in public services. The monsoon rains arrived days ahead of schedule in the western and northern parts of India, raising hopes the annual rains may not be as little as predicted by the India Meteorological Department.

Get all updates by Like us on Facebook and Follow on Twitter