A sudden bout of thunderstorm in and around Malda town in the early hours of Thursday led to the death of a man and his teenage son who were struck by lightning in a village some 40km away from the town.
Sources in the district administration said that during the storm, Dulal Ghosh, 53, and his son Anup, 16, who hail from Aladia village under Bhutni police station, were struck by lightning when they went to a cowshed to shift their cattle.
When they didn’t return home for long, their family members started searching for them and found the duo lying scorched and dead.
Anup, local sources said, was a bright student. He had passed the recent Madhyamik examination with 84 per cent marks this year.
“The boy had just taken admission in Class XI,” said a villager.
The family, administrative officials said, will get compensation for the lightning deaths in due course.
In Malda town, a number of trees got uprooted and blocked different roads in the storm. Some houses also got damaged.
Since morning, teams of Englishbazar municipality and the administration took up the task to cut the uprooted trees to clear the roads.
In ward 23 of the town, a woman and her three children who live in a wooden house with a tin roof narrowly escaped injury as the house collapsed during the storm. Locals rushed to help and provided an alternative accommodation to the family.
Hill landslides
In the hills, landslides occurred in at least two locations of NH10, the principal highway that connects Sikkim and Bengal’s Kalimpong district with the rest of the country, on Thursday morning amid heavy rainfall.
The landslides, which were reported at Martam in Sikkim and in 29th Mile of Kalimpong district, halted traffic for around two-and-a-half hours.
Eventually, the debris was cleared and vehicular movement resumed in these stretches around 12.30pm.
Officials of the state PWD (NH10 division), who maintain the national highway, said that they would start maintenance work between Coronation Bridge at Sevoke and Teesta Bazar to prevent landslides in at least four locations.
Among these include 29th Mile (some 55km from Siliguri), the most vulnerable stretch which saw around 20 landslides from late July to early September last year.
“A sum of Rs 90 crore has been sanctioned for the project. We hope that after the maintenance work, the impact of landslides reduces on the highway,” said a source.