MUMBAI, June 28: At least 89 people have died in heavy monsoon rains that have flooded India’s western state of Maharashtra and neighbouring Gujarat, officials said on Friday.

Suresh Joshi, principal secretary of Maharashtra, said 41 people have died over the past three days due to incessant rains that flooded the state’s Thane district, some 50kms north of Mumbai.

Another 23 people have been killed, most of them by drowning, due to rain elsewhere in the state, he said.

Joshi added that 6,000 families had been rendered homeless, while a number of farmers in Maharashtra’s Ratnagiri and Sindhudurg farming districts had lost their crops when the rains submerged entire villages.

The heavy rains have also disrupted the movement of trains in Thane. Police said it would take days to reconstruct the damaged rail network which is a transport lifeline of the area.

Flash floods triggered by monsoon rains in Gujarat have also submerged villages and marooned up to 4,000 people, state adminitrative officials said Friday.

“At least 25 people are estimated to have died in rain-related incidents over the past week,” a Gujarat state administrative official said.

“Hundreds of people have been rendered homeless and we have stepped up relief and rescue work,” he added.

India’s western region and its neighbouring areas have been receiving heavy rainfall since Monday, which the meteorological office predicts will not end soon.

“We expect heavy monsoon rains in this region,” said P.V Rajshekharan, a spokesman for the state meteorological observatory located in Gujarat’s commercial capital Ahmedabad.

“In the next 72 hours the western region will be lashed by torrential monsoon rains accompanied by thunderstorms,” he added.

The meteorological official added that Gujarat’s worst-hit northern Balsad district had received 615 centimetres of rainfall in the last 24 hours.

Many roads in Gujarat remained waterlogged with vehicular traffic paralysed.—AFP