Chennai: Trucker buried alive under pile of swampy M-sand

CHENNAI: A 44-year-old truck driver was buried alive at Sholavaram on Thursday night after a pile of M-sand he was watering in his vehicle turned into a swamp of sorts and sucked him in, police said.

The incident came to light on Friday morning when staff of a water service centre from where Arumugam had borrowed a hose found the truck parked in the same place where they last saw it the previous night. The driver was missing. They climbed atop the truck and found a piece of cloth sticking out. They dug up the sand with shovels, found Arumugam’s body and alerted police. A team of the Sholavaram police arrived and sent the body to the Ponneri Government Hospital for autopsy. A case was arrived.

A police officer said Maduravoyal resident Arumugam, a driver with a private transport firm, had on Thursday evening picked up a load of M-sand from a unit near Tiruttani and was headed to Chennai to offload it. He had sprayed water on it before starting.

Around 9pm, when he reached the service centre near Sholavaram, he decided to stop and water the load again. He borrowed a hose, attached to a motor at the centre, from the staff and dragged it to his vehicle. After a while, the staff came out and found that he was not atop the mound of sand. Assuming he had gone to some place nearby and would soon arrive to drive away the vehicle, they closed their establishment and left. The next morning, they arrived at work and found his body.

Arumugam may have got stuck in the sand even as water was gushing out from the hose and might have cried out but may not have been heard in the din of the motor, a police officer said, quoting an employee of the service centre.