A 50-year-old project engineer’s body was recovered from the partially collapsed Srisailam Left Bank Canal (SLBC) tunnel in Telangana on Tuesday, over a month after eight people got trapped at the under-construction site, district collector Badavath Santosh said.
Eight people –– engineers and labourers –– got trapped on February 22 when a portion of the roof collapsed at the SLBC tunnel in Nagarkurnool district, approximately 120km from Hyderabad. Rescue teams were forced to use fishing rafts, tyres, wooden and bamboo planks to navigate through the flooded tunnel. On March 9, rescuers recovered the first body—Gurpreet Singh who was the Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM)’s operator.
The 50-year-old project engineer was identified as Manoj Kumar, a resident of Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh. He worked for JP Associates, the firm contracted for the SLBC project. He is survived by his wife, son and daughter.
“The body was shifted to the government hospital at Nagarkurnool for a post-mortem. It will be handed over to his family after all the formalities are taken care of,” the district collector told reporters. The body was found nearly 50m away from the conveyor belt on Tuesday morning. Rescue workers, who are digging the last part of the 14km tunnel, noticed a foul smell emanating from a spot near the loco train track and alerted the officials, he added.
An ex-gratia of ₹25 lakh will be given to his family in accordance with the announcement made by chief minister A Revanth Reddy earlier, Santosh added.
“We shall continue the operations to search for the remaining people inside the tunnel,” Santosh said.
The six others who are yet to be traced are: Sree Niwas, 49, (field engineer) from Uttar Pradesh, Sandeep Sahu, 27, (worker) from Jharkhand, Jagta Xess, 37, (worker) from Jharkhand, Santosh Sahu, 37, (worker) from Jharkhand, Anuj Sahu, 25, (worker) from Jharkhand and Sunny Singh, 34 (worker) from Jammu & Kashmir.
Ashish Tripathi, Manoj Kumar’s brother-in-law, told reporters that the governments should come to the rescue of the families who had lost their breadwinners in the mishap. “We know it is an accident. We request the governments to help the families of the victims,” he said.
According to Pankaj Gour, managing partner of Jaypee Associates Ltd, the incident occurred during routine excavation work that began at 8 am on February 22. Workers noticed cracks in two cement concrete blocks on the tunnel’s roof. Before they could respond, the blocks collapsed, bringing down soil and water onto the TBM where 65 people were working.
“Following the sudden gush of water along with mud, those who were on the machine rushed out. A couple of them were virtually swept away by the gushing waters,” Gour said. “Eight people, including two engineers and two TBM operators, who were at the bottom side of the machine had no time to climb up and rush out. They were caught in the water.”
The collapse resulted in a complete power outage, making it impossible to locate the trapped workers. “In fact, they were not in one place but were standing in different positions around the machine,” Gour added.
S Venkateshwarlu, a senior forest official of Amrabad division, explained that the location falls within the Nallamala Tiger Sanctuary and would require excavating half a kilometre through protected forest land, making it unfeasible and against environmental regulations.
The tunnel is part of an ambitious irrigation project designed to provide 30 thousand million cubic feet (tmc ft) of water from the Srisailam reservoir to Nalgonda district. The project, which began in 2005 during the tenure of then chief minister YS Rajasekhara Reddy in undivided Andhra Pradesh, had recently resumed construction after a six-year halt that began in 2017.