Lakshmi was in tears as she recounted the early hours of Sunday, when a wall of mud and rock swallowed the shed where four families from her village had been sheltering.

“We woke up to the sound of something falling on the roof sheets. My brother, who was in the adjacent compartment, alerted everyone to move out,” she said.

Around 25 people living in a row of zinc-sheet sheds ran out to save themselves. But some whose compartments lay closer to the base of the hillock could not get out in time. “They could not come out, and within a few minutes the wall behind the shed came crumbling down, engulfing whatever came its way,” said Ms. Lakshmi, a native of Kakkaragol village in Karatagi taluk of Koppal district.

Mallikarjun, 30, his wife Nagaveni, 27, and their three-year-old son, Santhosh, were buried in the debris after a landslip triggered by heavy rain struck their shed at Gandhi Nagar in Tirthahalli. Rescue teams, working with earthmovers, retrieved their bodies after hours of effort on Sunday. When they were found, the mother and child were still clinging to each other.

Four families from Kakkaragol had arrived in Tirthahalli on Thursday, in search of work. Mallikarjun and Nagaveni had left their two daughters behind in their native village and brought only their youngest child with them. “We were looking for jobs. But as the heavy rain set in over the last two days, we had all decided to return home, since it becomes difficult for the women to find work during the rains,” Ms. Lakshmi said.

The families had, in fact, discussed their travel plans for Sunday before going to bed on Saturday night. Within hours, the rain and the landslip upended those plans. “We would have left today, but destiny had something else in store for the family,” she said.

Ms. Lakshmi, who had travelled to Tirthahalli with her husband, offered an observation that left those around her shaken. “If we had received the kind of rain that lashed Tirthahalli these past two days in our own village, we would never have left home and travelled so far in search of a living.” She said the family that died in the landslip owned two acres of land in their native village, but the income from it was not enough to meet their basic needs.

Every year, hundreds of people from the districts of north Karnataka migrate to the Malnad region in search of work, finding jobs on plantations, construction sites and in quarries. Somanath, a migrant worker from Lingasaguru in Raichur district, said he had travelled to Tirthahalli with his wife and two sons to work on the plantations. His sons, aged 17 and 14, have given up their studies to work alongside him. He earns ₹800 a day, which he considers good money. “We earn a decent wage here, compared to what the field back home yields,” he said.

The workers had been allotted vacant land at Gandhi Nagar, where they had put up sheds covered with zinc sheets, partitioned into compartments for each family with more sheets of zinc. They would cook their meals early in the day before leaving for work and return only in the evening to rest. Now, the taluk administration has shifted them all to a temporary care centre set up at Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Bhavan in the town.

Published - August 02, 2026 07:33 pm IST