Bengaluru, Jan 7: In a shocking incident, three manual scavengers suffocated to death while clearing blocked manhole at ND Sepal apartment at Somasundarapalya in HSR Layout in Bengaluru on Sunday.
The deceased identified as Madegowda, Narayanaswamy and Srinivas, all aged between 30 to 35 years, were residents of Bandepalya. Lack of safety measures at the premise has been blamed for the mishap.
A senior police officer said that the incident occurred around 10.45 am when four of the workers were cleaning the manhole. One went inside the manhole and did not come up. Fearing something was wrong, two others also got in and did not turn up.
Another person who was standing nearby, realising that none of the three were responding, raised an alarm. Nearby residents came out and alerted the fire and emergency services personnel. After an hour of a rescue operation, the bodies were recovered and sent to St John hospital for the postmortem.
"I was at balcony when a worker started screaming and I called fire service. No safety gears were given to the workers. There was also no supervisor to monitor the work and they might have used a machine instead of cleaning it manually," a resident on the condition of anonymity said.
A fire official said that though the incident occurred around 10.45am the alert came after an hour. A case of negligence against the contractor and management was filed by the Bandepalya police.
(Image used for representational purpose only)
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