Udhagamandalam: The casual worker, who sustained 90% burns at the blast occurred at the gun cartridge section of Cordite factory at Aruvangadu near Ooty on Thursday, died without responding to treatment at a private hospital in Coimbatore same night.
Suresh, 47, a resident of Bikkatty village, was handling nitrocellulose waste when the explosion took place at 10.30am on Thursday. He was hired three months ago as a casual worker, said B K Singh, general manager of Ooty Cordite factory, one of the oldest defence factories in the country.
Asked whether a casual labourer could handle high-risk nitrocellulose compound, Singh said, “We don’t know why he was at the gun cartridge section. We have initiated an inquiry in this connection.”
He was also not sure about the compensation to be paid to the family of Suresh. “We have to check with the insurance company. As he was a casual labour, we may have to fix it at higher level,” Singh said.
Pointing out that risk was involved in work at any section of the ordnance factory dealing with chemicals, an employee, who didn’t want to be named, said, “Hence, the factory management should hire only permanent trained staff.”
The body was, meanwhile, handed over to the kin of the deceased after postmortem on Friday.
The Aruvangadu police have registered a case. “Investigation is underway to ascertain the cause of the explosion,” an investigating official told TOI.
Blasts are not new to this defence factory in the Nilgiris. It has witnessed two major explosions in 1992 and 2010.
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