Thirty-six people were killed in a landslide near a village in coastal Raigad district of Maharashtra, police said on Friday.
The incident occurred near Talai village in Mahad tehsil on Thursday evening, they said.
"Thirty-six bodies have been recovered from the landslide spot so far," a senior police official said.
The search and rescue operation is on by the NDRF teams, personnel of the local disaster management cell, police and district administration, he said.
Raigad district collector Nidhi Choudhary said the landslide incident was reported late Thursday evening. "But since the roads leading to the spot were blocked due to the floods and the sludge, the rescue teams found it difficult to reach the site," she said.
"The operation resumed today morning and the bodies were recovered by afternoon," she added.
According to officials, there are around 30 houses in the village, which were completely damaged due to the incident.
Four dead in Mumbai building collapse
Four persons were killed and seven others suffered injuries after a single-storey house collapsed in Shivaji Nagar area of Govandi in eastern Mumbai early on Friday, a civic official said.
The incident occurred at plot number 3 near Bombay City Hospital around 5 am, he said.
"On being alerted about it, seven fire engines, one rescue van of the fire brigade, and personnel of the police as well as other agencies reached the spot and launched a search and rescue operation," the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) official said.
So far, four persons have lost their lives in the incident and seven others were injured, he said.
After the incident, the injured were rushed to two hospitals - Ghatkopar-based Rajawadi Hospital and Lokmanya Tilak Municipal General Hospital in Sion, the official said.
However, doctors at the Rajawadi Hospital declared two of them brought dead. They were identified as Neha Parvez Shaikh (35) and Mokar Zabir Shaikh, (80). A woman, Shamshad Shaikh (45), who was admitted to that hospital in a critical condition, died during treatment later, he added.
"Meanwhile, a 22-year-old man, identified as Farin Shaikh, was pulled out from under the rubble and was taken to Rajawadi Hospital, where doctors declared him dead before admission, the BMC official said.
A fire brigade official said that 15 people have been pulled out of the debris so far and the operation is still underway.
The injured persons are undergoing treatment and their condition is stable, he said.
IMD predicts heavy rainfall for Maharashtra
The India Meteorological Department (IMD) on Friday issued a red alert for six districts of Maharashtra which have been already pounded by heavy rains, forecasting "extremely heavy" rainfall and recommending preventive actions.
The alert was issued for the next 24 hours for the districts of Raigad, Ratnagiri and Sindhudurg in coastal Konkan and also for Pune, Satara and Kolhapur in Western Maharashtra.
Extremely heavy rainfall is "very likely" at isolated places in ghat (hilly/upland) areas, an IMD official said. "Very likely" denotes 51 to 75 per cent probability of occurrence, he added.
The forecast for Satara is "most likely" which means a probability of more than 75 per cent, he said.
A rainfall above 204.4 mm in 24 hours is considered as extremely heavy.
The forecast also included red alert for Ratnagiri and Satara for Saturday.
Intensity of showers will drastically come down from Sunday onward, the IMD said.
Mahabaleshwar in Satara district, one of Maharashtra's most well-patronised hill stations, has received 594.4 millimetres of rainfall in a 24-hour period ending at 8:30 am on Friday, which an IMD official said may be the highest ever recorded there.
Mahabaleshwar, some 260 kilometres from here, got 482 mm of rainfall on Wednesday and 461 on Thursday, data from the India Meteorological Department showed.
"Mahabaleshwar received 594.4 mm of rainfall in the last 24 hours. This is probably the highest ever rainfall recorded in the hill station," Dr Jayant Sarkar, head of the IMD's Regional Meteorological Centre told PTI.
