Guwahati, June 22: Three persons — two of them children — were buried alive in a landslide caused by heavy rain at Lalung Gaon near Betkuchi here early this morning.

The victims were identified as Nima Ram Choudhury, 38, Rahul Choudhury, 7 and Anuj Baishya, 3. All three of them were sleeping in the same room when they were crushed under the mound of earth around 3.30am.

Nima Ram — a motor garage owner — was from Manduli village in Rajasthan’s Sikar district.

Rahul was a Class III student of Betkuchi High School.

Nima Ram’s brother and the owner of the house, Shish Ram Choudhary, 42, and his wife Bimala Devi, 35, escaped with minor injuries. Some other members of the family also escaped.

Three-year-old Anuj, his mother Sikha Baishya, 24 and his grandmother Bhanu Baishya, 56, are residents of Kailash Nagar in Noonmati and they were guests at Sish Ram’s house.

Sikha and Bhanu also survived with minor injuries.

“We immediately came out of our house after hearing the cries of the survivors and tried to rescue those trapped under the debris. We somehow managed to pull the two children out of the debris and rushed them to Down Town Hospital where they were declared dead on arrival by doctors,” said Anu Devi, a neighbour of the victims.

“We immediately called up Gorchuk police station but police arrived after over an hour,” she said.

The Kamrup (metro) district administration contacted the 1st battalion of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) at 6.10am. NDFR personnel reached the spot after half an hour and pulled Nima Ram’s body out of the debris.

The police handed over the bodies to the families this afternoon.

The district administration urged people living in houses constructed on slopes and other vulnerable areas in the hills to remain cautious during the rainy season and shift to safer places if required.

Kamrup (metro) deputy commissioner Ashutosh Agnihotri said the administration was repeatedly appealing to the people not to construct houses on hills slopes or any other vulnerable place in order to avoid such incidents.

He said the government has started a comprehensive scheme for landslide mitigation in the city and currently, experts from Assam Engineering College are carrying out the first phase of the project — vulnerability mapping.

“In the first phase we will identify areas that are vulnerable to landslides in the city. In the second phase we will identity the mitigation measures to be taken up and the measures will be implemented in the third phase,” Agnihotri said.

The house involved in today’s incident was constructed on an encroached plot of land, he added.

The district administration had also constituted surveillance teams recently to visit the areas, which are vulnerable to landslides and spread awareness on landslide prevention measures.