Police said a man, his two daughters and a son were crushed to death when the tree under which they were sleeping fell on them at Kona village in Chatra district.
In the second incident, three members of a family were killed at Baghtand in Dhanbad district in lightning, Dhanbad police said.
The storm hit around 4.30 AM and according to reports a large number of electricity poles and hundreds of trees were uprooted in the storm in Ranchi, Jamshedpur, Hazaribagh, Latehar and some other districts.