On the afternoon of August 14, a group of around 15 friends set out from their village in Jharkhand’s Simdega district, to play a friendly hockey match in a neighbouring village. Their village, Tutikel, lies close to the main road that connects the district to the state’s capital, Ranchi, around 130 km away. The neighbouring village, Jhapla, lies in the interiors of the same block, around 7 km away.
Travelling on scooters and motorcycles, the group reached the playground in Jhapla at around 1.30 pm. But as they prepared to play, a light rain began to fall. A few players sought shelter under a jackfruit tree next to the playground, while others ran to a food stall set up especially for the match. Parras Dang and his brother Senan Dang were among the players who stood under the tree.
Then, lightning struck the tree.
“The last thing I remember before I went unconscious was holding the umbrella for my brother who was steering his scooter under the tree,” said Parras Dang.
Parras, his brother and six others collapsed on the ground as smoke began to rise from the tree’s branches. The damage that a lightning strike can do is immense – by some calculations, a bolt of lightning can be as hot as 30,000 degree Celsius or five times hotter than the surface temperature of the sun.
For a few minutes, rain pattered down as the unconscious bodies lay on the ground. “The thunder was so loud that initially we were shocked and felt scared to go under the tree and check up on them,” said Marsalan Dang, another of the players, who stood at the food stall.
Finally, some of those who were present rushed to the tree and pulled the fallen players out from under it. They found that three of them had no heartbeat.
In the traditional medicine of the Munda Adivasi community, to which most players belonged, cow dung is believed to help cool bodies from burns. So, the teammates rushed to a nearby household, fetched some cow dung and applied it on the bodies of all those who had collapsed.
They could not immediately call for emergency medical services because Jhapla has no mobile phone coverage. Instead, they had to ride out for five kilometres towards the main road to find cellular reception and call for ambulances.
The ambulances arrived and rushed the seven players to the community health centre in the town of Kolebira, from where they were then taken to Sadar Hospital in Simdega. Three players – Senan Dang, Enos Burh and Nirmal Horo – were declared dead on arrival at the hospital. Five others – Clement Bage, Jailesh Bage, Salim Bage, Patras Bage and Parras Dang – were treated for injuries. The injured were released from the hospital after a few days.
On September 10, I met Parras at Tutikel near his home. “I am still feeling weak and haven’t recovered my strength because of the lightning strike,” he said. “A burn on my lower back is still healing.”
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India’s proximity to the equator and the Indian Ocean makes it conducive to thunderstorms. As a result, the country is also more vulnerable to lightning strikes.
According to the Lightning Resilient India Campaign, which works towards reducing deaths by lightning, the country has over the years seen a rise in both the number of thunderstorms and the incidence of lightning.
The result has been devastating. A 2024 paper that analysed lightning-related fatalities between 1967 and 2020 found that in the span of 53 years, lightning had caused a total of 101,309 deaths in India. Further, the average annual fatalities per state and union territory had increased, from 38 in the period between 1967 and 2002, to 61 between 2003 and 2020, even though the number of such territories increased by more than ten during this time.
Data from the National Crime Records Bureau shows that lightning strikes account for the largest number of deaths in India attributed to “forces of nature” – higher than those caused by other categories of natural disasters such as floods, landslides, and heatwaves. A 2022 report of the bureau noted that lightning accounted for 2,887 of 8,060 such deaths, or 35.8% of the total.
Some regions are more heavily impacted than others. According to the Lightning Resilience in India Campaign, Jharkhand and other states in central and eastern India, such as West Bengal, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, and Madhya Pradesh, are lightning hotspots in the country. Lightning strikes are also frequent in the western Himalayan region and northeast India.
The states where the most number of people died from lightning strikes included Madhya Pradesh, with 496 fatalities, Bihar with 329, Odisha, with 316, Uttar Pradesh, with 301 and Jharkhand, with 267.
But data from Jharkhand’s disaster management department indicates a higher death toll in the state from lightning strikes, recording a total of 350 fatalities in the year 2021-’22. Overall, this data suggests, casualties due to lightning strikes have been steadily increasing over the years in the state. While it saw 144 fatalities in 2014-’2015, since 2020 it has seen more than 300 such deaths every year.
Some scientists have linked the rise in lightning strikes to the climate crisis. The Lightning Resilient India campaign notes that factors that contribute to increased lightning activity include global warming, as well as “environmental degradation, rampant emission, pollution leading to a rise in aerosol levels, depletion of water bodies, deforestation, urbanization, fast industrialization and creation of heat islands”.
Professor Manoranjan Mishra, an expert on lightning and head of the department of geography at Fakir Mohan University in Balasore was circumspect about this idea.
“While one cannot directly correlate an increase in lightning strikes to the climate crisis, it can be said that human activity has induced changes in the climate which have led to an increase in the frequency and intensity of lightning strikes,” he said. “A 1% rise in temperature leads to a 10-14% rise in moisture, which then gets dispersed through extreme weather events.”
Mishra explained that causes of lightning are specific to different regions. In parts of central and eastern India, heavy mining has led to an increase in aerosols and pollutants in the atmosphere, which contribute to an increase in lightning activity. Additionally, changes in rainfall patterns are also linked to the increase in such activity. “If rain falls regularly then there will be less lightning, but if there are breaks in the rainfall then there will be more lightning,” said Mishra.
Within a region, socio-economic factors are a key factor in determining who is most impacted by the problem. According to the 2021 Lightning Resilient India Campaign report, 96% of lightning related deaths occur in rural India. People who work outdoors for long hours, such as farmers, labourers and grazers have a higher tendency to be exposed to lightning strikes. Of those who died from lightning strikes that year, 71% had been standing under trees.
In a 2021 paper, Sanjay Srivastava, convenor of the Lightning Resilient India Campaign, noted that the map of lightning strikes in India corresponds closely to the map that indicates areas with a large tribal population. Analysing casualties between April 2019 to March 2020, he found that 68% of those who died from lightning strikes were tribal people.
Mishra observed three categories of casualties. He noted that “85% of all lightning related deaths occur in the monsoons, often to those working in water for long hours, such as farmers”. Agricultural fields are usually flat, open grounds which offer no shelter, and water that fills up in fields acts as a strong conductor for electricity. The second kind of casualties occurred in the pre-monsoon months of April and May, when people who don’t carry umbrellas take shelter from the rain under trees. In open fields, mature trees are often the tallest objects in the area and are thus most likely to be struck by lightning. The third category of casualties that Mishra had observed was of people living in houses made of mud, which are more vulnerable to lightning strikes that hit the ground.
An additional factor that contributes to higher casualty numbers in central and eastern India is the timing of lightning strikes. In these regions, Srivastava observed, lightning usually strikes in the daytime between 12 pm and 7 pm, when people are likely to be outdoors. On the other hand, in the Himalayan region, lightning usually strikes at night, when most people are likely to be indoors, and hence does not lead to as many casualties.
On September 11, I visited the playground in Jhapla where lightning had struck the players. A mere ten steps away from the ill-fated tree stood a local government school named RCPS Jhapla, which has three para teachers, a contractual position, and around 130 students.
“August 14 was a working day, luckily all the students and teachers were indoors when lightning struck,” said para teacher Ruben Kandulna.
The school did not have a lightning arrestor, which would protect it from a lightning strike, despite the fact that in 2016, Jharkhand’s disaster management department mandated that all government schools install them. An arrestor, typically made from a metal rod, protects a building by intercepting lightning strikes and conducting their charge safely into the ground.
Guidelines that the National Disaster Management Authority issued in 2018 list school teachers as among the groups that can help the general public be better prepared for disasters. Spreading such information is one of two crucial kinds of measures that the government can take to prevent deaths by lightning strikes.
When I asked Kandulna if the administration had imparted information to teachers and students about safety measures against lightning strikes, he confirmed that it had. However, he could not recall any such measures other than that people were advised to avoid going out during thunderstorms and avoid standing under trees if they were out in the open.
The administration had not passed on other crucial information, or not emphasised it sufficiently. For instance, lightning experts recommend that anyone caught in the open in a thunderstorm without any lightning safe shelters nearby can for their safety crouch on the ground with their feet together and their head tucked down. They are also advised to avoid water bodies and look for dry surfaces on which to stand. Further, experts note, remaining in an enclosed vehicle if possible is safer than standing out in the open.
The National Disaster Management Authority’s 2018 guidelines noted that local authorities were in the best position to “ensure the last mile delivery of messages”. Under the guidelines, these authorities are expected to carry out regular “inter-personal communication activities”, demonstrate safety tips using “local customs, cultural aspects and behaviour patterns” and involve local bodies such as “Municipal bodies, NGOs, Panchayati Raj Institutions, Anganwadis, Gram sabhas, Medical professionals” and disseminate information in “schools, colleges, offices, cinemas”.
Yet grassroots activists observe that they seldom see these activities being conducted. “I don’t see anybody spreading awareness about lightning safety except for us,” said Daya Mishra, the Jharkhand lead of the Lightning Resilient India Campaign. “People still take shelter under solitary trees when it rains, not knowing that they are making themselves more vulnerable to getting struck by lightning.” As part of the campaign, team members in different states conduct awareness workshops and teach rural communities how to build rudimentary lightning arrestors from bamboo.
“At the most we’ve heard that we shouldn’t stand under trees during lightning, but if people are out in the open, then many forget and run to take shelter under trees during a storm,” said Kuldeep Dundung, upmukhiya, or deputy chief, of Tutikel village.
He was also not aware that lightning strikes occur mostly after 12 pm in the region. Based on this information, gleaned over years of meteorological analysis, the Lightning Resilient India Campaign advises that people should try to wrap up work outdoors in wide, open spaces in the morning before 12 pm.
Apart from educating the public, another step the government can take to tackle the problem is send out SMS alerts about major thunderstorms during which lightning strikes are likely, which would allow people to take protective measures immediately.
The availability of technology to predict the likelihood of storms is crucial for this. According to a report in Wired, “As of April 2022, India’s National Remote Sensing Center had 46 lightning-detection sensors installed across the country. Another institute, Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune, has 83 in place. These, along with other private and institutional data, monitor and guide India’s lightning strike warning system.”
The 2018 guidelines of the National Disaster Management Authority describe two key types of forecasting for weather related hazards – “nowcasting”, which is carried out between three and six hours before an event, and can provide specific information about the place and time of occurrence; and short to medium range forecasting which is carried out between one and five days in advance, and provides a more general probability of the occurrence of an extreme weather-related event, and potential areas in which it could occur.
The Indian Meteorological Department has since 2013 provided nowcast services for weather events like thunderstorms. The department generates such nowcasts at the state-level for different districts and sends the information to district collectors and disaster management units.
Srivastava believes that deaths due to lightning strikes are entirely preventable with the technology currently available. “We have adequate weather forecasting technology to predict the possibility of lightning beforehand and warn people to not go out, but, this information is not reaching the last mile,” he said. “Reducing the number of casualties requires collective action on everyone’s part.”
Officials I met at the Jharkhand State Disaster Management Department were confident that their text messages were reaching all citizens using mobile phones in the state.
On August 13, the day lightning struck in Jhapla, the Indian Metrological Department had forecasted “isolated heavy rainfall” with a “very likely” possibility of lightning in Jharkhand. Yet this information had not reached the young men who set out to play hockey in Jhapla that day. In fact, teammates said that it had only been raining lightly and there was no thunderstorm when lightning struck the tree.
Overall, only three out of approximately 20 people I met with said they regularly received SMS alerts warning them about thunderstorms. These alerts were particularly unlikely to reach Jhapla, since the village is outside the range of cellular networks.
This lack of connectivity is a significant hurdle to spreading information about risks of lightning: according to government data from February 2022, over 25,000 villages in India lack mobile connectivity, out of which 1,144 are in Jharkhand.
The Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology has also developed a mobile application, Damini, which provides information about the occurrence of lightning strikes within a forty kilometre radius of the user. But none of the family members or friends of the deceased were aware about the application. Many also used basic mobile phones that do not support such software.
Further, officials at the district collector’s office in Simdega explained that SMS alerts about lightning strikes were only sent out to farmers groups and not to all citizens. When I asked officials about awareness campaigns to educate people about protecting themselves from lightning strikes, they said that there were no such activities being carried out, but that “information, education and communication material” was displayed in prominent places in the district. However, in my visits to the district collector’s office, the town’s main bus stand, market area and main hospital, I did not see any such material.
The 2023 Lightning Resilient India Campaign report states that “given the ubiquity and fatality of lightning incidents”, lightning should be notified as a national disaster. It noted, “At present only relief is being addressed. We need to address in entirety that is prevention, mitigation and capacity building too.”
But a July 2023 report by the Hindu noted that, “The Union government is not in favour of declaring lightning a natural disaster as deaths caused by it can be avoided through education and awareness, according to a senior government official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.”
Nonetheless, some states, such as Odisha and Jharkhand, have declared lightning strikes a disaster at the state level and formulated policies to provide victims with compensation. In Jharkhand, the state government offers Rs 4 lakh as compensation to family members of those who have died due to lightning strikes and up to Rs 2 lakh for those who have been injured. The money for this compensation is drawn partially from the National Disaster Risk Management Fund, which is distributed across states, and partially from the State Disaster Risk Management Fund.
On September 11, close to a month after the incident in Jhapla, I met with family members of the deceased in Tutikel village, in the presence of the upmukhiya. All the family members said that they were unaware that they were entitled to compensation. Senan Dang is survived by a pregnant wife and Nirmala Horo is also survived by a wife and a four-year-old child.
“I wasn’t even allowed to go to the hospital to see my husband that day,” said Dang’s distraught wife Archana Bage, “Family and friends are helpful but how long can I depend on them?”
While the local MLA offered the affected families Rs 10,000 for their stay and other expenses in the hospital, the families paid for the funerals themselves. They said they had not received any official compensation from the state government. As of two days ago, a social worker who was in contact with the families told Scroll, the families had received the post mortems of the deceased from the hospital and submitted their applications for the compensation, but were yet to receive any funds.
Parras Dang and two others who were present on the day of the strike said that they doubted they would ever play hockey again in the monsoons. When I asked if anyone from the administration or public health system had followed up with them, they replied that they had not. Fear continued to loom over them. “We are terrified of lightning strikes now,” Marsalan said. “Just a week ago lightning struck a barn in the village and many animals died.”
