Two contractual workers died on the small hours of Friday after they allegedly got stuck underground while laying a sewer line here, said officials.
The workers, both in their twenties, were laying the pipes late on Thursday night in Salarpur, about 12- -feet down from the ground level when water from a nearby drain started entering the pit through a crack, an official said.
4-hour-long operation
The police, Fire Department and the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) were called. The bodies were retrieved after a nearly four-hour-long rescue operation by the NDRF team, said an NDRF official said.
“We reached the spot at 3.15 a.m. and began operations. The first body was recovered at 6.25 a.m. and the second at 7.20 a.m.,” said Jeetender Yadav, who led the nine-member NDRF team. The deceased have been identified as Amit and Salman. “An FIR has been registered at the Sector 39 police station and the contractor, who was handling the project, has been booked for causing death due to negligence,” said a police officer, adding no one has been arrested.
“The junior engineer has been dismissed. The authority has also blacklisted the contractor to prevent him from undertaking any future projects with it,” said Noida Authority’s Officer on Special Duty Rajesh Kumar Singh.