india can expect one or more devastating earthquakes in the near future, predict researchers from the University of Colorado, usa. An analysis of the shifting Indian subcontinent reveals enormous pent-up strain along most of the 1,200-km arc where it slides under the Himalaya and beyond the Tibetan plateau. The researchers say there is enough evidence that such pressures have been relieved in the past only through great earthquakes, far more powerful than the one that devastated Bhuj in Gujarat on January 26, 2001.

"More than 1,287km of the Himalayan mountain range constitute a catastrophe zone that is ripe, mature and ready to go,' says Roger G Bilham, a geologist at the university and one of the authors of the study. Bilham said the pressures in the subterranean rock and the power of resulting earthquakes would only continue to build as the vast landmass inexorably pushes into Asia