PATIALA: Six labourers died and five others suffered serious injuries after a 25-feet wall of an under-construction rice mill crumbled down on Sunday morning. The incident took place at the outskirts of Lakhanpur village of
Khamano division in Punjab’s
Fatehgarh sahib district where the construction of the building of a rice mill had just begun a few days back.
The district administrative officials revealed that five of the labourers had died on the spot following the collapse of a wall while the sixth labourer died in the hospital at Chandigarh. The wall of the mill collapsed down at around 10.30 am in the village where around sixteen labourers were working at the construction site.
As the wall collapsed upon the workers at the site some of them immediately got crushed under the debris. The injured were rushed to
local civil hospital in Khamano block where the doctors declared five of the labourers as brought dead and referred the remaining injured to the higher institute.
Khamano sub divisional magistrate said, "Labourers were injured after the wall collapsed down at the site where they were working. We immediately rushed to the spot and analysed the situation meanwhile the injured were rushed to the government hospital for treatment. We called the ambulances to rush to the spot after we received the information about the collapsing of a wall. The inquiry is being done into the matter however primary investigation has revealed that poor quality material was being used for the construction of the building."
The deceased have been identified as Manjit Singh and Jagjit Singh of Lakhanpur village,
Ranvir Singh and Harpreet Singh of Dhuri, Raghvir Singh of Farour village and a migrant labourer Parmeshwar who was also living in Farour village.
The injured were identified as Jasvir Singh and Harbhajan Singh of Farour village, Lakhwinder Singh, Kulwant Singh, and Makhan Singh of Dhuri who all are undergoing treatment in the hospital at Chandigarh.
The Khamano police however in the evening registered the case under sections of Culpable homicide not amounting to murder against the accused owners and the contractor.
Khamano station house officer inspector Navdeep Singh said, "A case against owners of the under-construction rice mill including Rajesh Kumar and Himanshu Bansal of Dhuri, Sangrur and the contractor Avtar Singh alias Bhola, has been registered under sections 304 of Indian Penal Code. No arrests have been made as all these accused are on the run since they were informed about the incident by someone. We have also written to the PWD and Building and Road department to visit the site and provide us with the actual reason behind the wall-collapse.”
