Mumbai / Pune : The toll in the landslide disaster in Malin village has gone up to 65 Friday evening, rescue officials said. The rescue operations may complete within a day or two and the focus now shifts on the rehabilitation. State government announced ex-gratia compensation of Rs. 5 lakh, while the ‘Dabbawalas’ in Mumbai have decided to adopt a novel way to collect help for the landslide victims.
Teams of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) and other agencies have rescued 23 people from under the debris in the past two days.
District administration confirmed that the death toll has risen to sixty five and eight people have been rescued live from the ill fated Malin village of Pune district, where a landslide had occurred on Wednesday.
NDRF Inspector General Sandeep Rai Rathore said, “Our team has recovered sixty dead bodies by now and the operation is in full swing. They have picked up little bit of momentum depending on the clearance of the weather. We assume that the operation will last for another extra day provided the weather is clear. And if not tomorrow then, may be a day more extra.”
Talking of rescue teams he said, “Roughly nine teams comprising of 376-380, roughly in that range, our officers are there. The senior officers have also been visiting there. If we continue like this, enough man power is there on the ground to operate, we may be able to complete in next 24 or 48 hours.”
It has also come to light that more than two dozen people, mostly students from a school, were sleeping on a platform in the village temple premises and may have perished in the disaster. A majority of them are believed to have be either washed away in the river flowing adjacent to the village or buried with the temple, grieving teachers of the school told media persons.
