Guwahati

The snow-preserved body of an Indian soldier was given to his family on Tuesday, nearly 40 years after he died in a plane crash in the Himalayas, an official said. Soldiers discovered the frozen bodies of Mahendranath Phukan and two other victims half-buried in snow on a glacier at an altitude of 5 300m.

The army was called out for rescue operations on Sunday as more than a million people were marooned in north-east India, which has been hit by raging floods, officials said. The latest deaths took to 15 the number of people killed in flood-related accidents in the past week in Assam and adjoining Meghalaya.

Floods caused by summer monsoon rains displaced about 66 000 people in India’s north-east, while heavy rains disrupted traffic in eastern India, officials said on Friday. In north-eastern Assam state, floodwaters from the Brahmaputra river had inundated about 13 000ha of land, the state government said.

At least 51 people were killed on Thursday when an overcrowded bus taking them to a wedding skidded off the road and slid into a pond in north-east India, police said. "We have extricated 51 bodies so far. There could be some more people in the pond and divers are at work," a police official told Agence France-Presse.

A poor man in eastern India who fed a flame of hay for more than five decades to mark the 1947 independence of India from the British died in his thatched hut on Tuesday, relatives said. Paduram Mahanta (83) was cremated by one of his sons in their village, Dipila Kamargaon, 75km from Guwahati, the main city of Assam state.

Hundreds of thousands of flood-affected people in India’s northeastern state of Assam face starvation as food supplies dry up and roads are cut off after heavy rains, said officials.

Swirling floodwaters which have left 500 dead and millions homeless continue to affect vast tracts of Bangladesh, India and Nepal.

Flash floods triggered by monsoon rains in India’s northeastern state of Assam have submerged at least 30 villages, marooning up to 20 000 people.