Bilaspur landslide: Death toll rises to 16 as rescue teams push through debris of buried bus

The death toll in Himachal Pradesh's Bilaspur district, where a private bus was buried under the debris of a massive landslide on Tuesday evening, increased to 16 with the recovery of a child's body on Wednesday morning, officials said.

Search and rescue operations to trace people buried under the debris continued on Wednesday after a huge portion of a mountain gave way and fell on the moving bus in the Bhalughat area near Berthin around 6.40 pm on Tuesday.

"The death toll has increased to 16 with the recovery of one more body today," Bilaspur SP Sandeep Dhawal told PTI.

The rescue operations, which were halted late last night due to poor visibility and mud sliding, resumed on Wednesday morning with two teams from the NDRF, locals, police, home guards, and firemen engaged in the search.

A manual search is underway with dog squads being pressed into service to search the victims along with machinery to remove the heavy rocks, officials from the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) told PTI Videos.

The deceased have been identified as Naksh, Aarav, Sanjeev, Vimla, Kamlesh, Kanta Devi, Anjana, Bakshi Ram, Narender Sharma, Krishan Lal, Chuni Lal, Rajnish, Sonu, Sharif Khan and Praveen Kumar, they said, adding that the body of the child found on Wednesday morning is yet to be identified.

The deceased include four members of a family -- the wives of two brothers and two children of one sibling -- who were returning home after attending a function.

The children of the other sibling -- Arushi and Shaurya -- were among those rescued and have been sent home after treatment at AIIMS Bilaspur, an official said.

"My wife and two children, and my brother's wife and their two children, were returning home from a function when the tragedy struck. Only my children are alive now," Raj Kumar, father of Arushi and Shaurya, said.

Deputy Chief Minister Mukesh Agnihotri, who took stock of the rescue operations at the accident site and also met the victims' families on Tuesday night, said, "The region has been witnessing rain for the past two days, and it is evident that the accident took place due to the sliding of the mountain following heavy downpour. A magisterial inquiry has been ordered into the incident." "Himachal is a hilly state with young mountains, where construction of big roads, bridges and tunnels is taking place. So, there is a need to review whether the present development model is sustainable," he said, adding that the state suffered losses of Rs 20,000 crore due to different natural disasters since 2023.

The region has been lashed by intermittent rain since Monday, making the fragile mountain slopes unstable.

President Droupadi Murmu, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union ministers Amit Shah and J P Nadda, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra were among the leaders who condoled the loss of lives in the incident.

Modi announced an ex gratia of Rs 2 lakh from the Prime Minister's National Relief Fund (PMNRF) to the next of kin of each deceased, while the injured would get Rs 50,000.

Expressing grief over the incident, Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu on Tuesday night directed officials to expedite the rescue operations, a statement said.