Divers had a tough time fishing out bodies. Amit Mehra
Mohammad Zafar had been scrolling through the Google news feed on Friday afternoon when his elder brother came dashing through the main door. “He told me the Ghazipur landfill had come crashing down, and several people had died. My brain stopped working for a few seconds,” he said. By the time Zafar reached the accident site, he found several residents had gathered near the canal, in which several vehicles had fallen. Zafar started rallying his friends — Mohammad Afsar Ansari, Parvez, Khalid and Raju. Together, the group managed to get hold of a rope and got to work.
Residents claimed they rescued three people before help finally arrived. Twenty minutes later, 30 divers from the District Magistrate East boat club arrived from their office at Kashmere Gate. The men undressed, while their seniors deliberated on the course of action. After setting up a net and balancing themselves using branches, the divers took a dip inside the 15-foot canal.
“It was very tough. It was raining heavily and the water level kept rising. Our seniors coordinated with other agencies and they reduced the flow of water in the canal. We managed to save two people,” said Irshad, one of the rescue workers. Divers also managed to fish out a car, two motorcycles and a scooter with the help of a crane. However, Raj Kumari and Abhishek were still missing. An hour after divers first took the plunge, many had started to come back as replacements arrived. “The canal was stinking. We had to blindly grab everything we could get our hands on; many divers sustained cuts as they grabbed at garbage and branches of broken trees,” said Azharuddin.
After sustaining minor cuts across his hands and feet, Azharuddin managed to grab Raj Kumari’s hand. Her body was kept alongside the vehicles. In the meantime, his colleague, Sarfaraz, managed to find Abhishek’s body, entangled in broken branches and weighed down by garbage.
