46, including 37 children, drown across Bihar during Jitiya festival

Forty-six people, including 37 children, drowned across Bihar while bathing in waterbodies on Wednesday during the Jitiya festival.

Rivers and lakes have been overflowing in the State following continuous rain. On Wednesday, children went to ponds and nearby rivers along with their mothers to take bath, said officials. Deaths were reported in Aurangabad, Saran, Rohtas, West Champaran, East Champaran, Nalanda, Buxar, Siwan, Vaishali, Gopalganj, Muzaffarpur and Arwal districts.

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar expressed grief over the incidents and announced ex-gratia of ₹4 lakh each for the families of the deceased. A Bihar Disaster Management Control Room official in Patna told The Hindu that compensation has been given to 20 families so far and the rest are being processed.

Officials said 10 children drowned in Aurangabad district. On Wednesday, the District Magistrate Shrikant Shastree had said that eight children had died and two had gone missing. The two bodies were later recovered.

Seven people drowned in Kaimur, of whom four were teenagers. While two were swept away by the Durgavati river in Rupur village of Bhabua area, five lost their lives in Kalyanpur village. In Saran’s Chhapra, five children drowned; five people, including four women, drowned in Patna, and four girls were washed away by the Sone River in Bihta. Eyewitnesses said the four had gone to bathe in the river late in the evening and were swept away by the strong currents.

In East Champaran’s Motihari, five people drowned in the Somvati river in Kalyanpur block. In the Vrindavan panchayat, a woman and her daughter died in a pond. Three children drowned in West Champaran and Rohtas districts each.

The families of the deceased blamed lack of crowd management near the waterbodies for the deaths. “Deployment of the disaster management teams would have prevented the casualties,“ said Shailesh Kumar, a resident of Dehri-on-Sone in Rohtas district.