Agony of a community that lost its friends in a flash

Body of a worker being recovered from a construction site at Electronics City, Kalamassery, where over half a dozen workers were trapped as land caved in. | Photo Credit: THULASI KAKKAT

The barren and uneven dust bowl of sorts stretched across the campus of NeST Electronic City in Kalamassery has a feel of foreboding about it.

And so it proved on Friday when it turned a graveyard for four migrant workers, as it buried them under soil while nearly doing the same to two others.

“He is gone, dead,” said Jalaludheen with a face as cold and lifeless as death itself. It had been hours since his brother Noujesh Mandal vanished in a pit he was digging as if fated to dig his own graveyard.

Sitting next to Jalaludheen with his back to an iron fencing, the grief-stricken Minazum was in a state of delirium unable to stop what appeared to be anguished cursing. There was no way to know as he kept telling everyone what went wrong for his brother in Bengali.

Ali Amir Mandal was inconsolable having seen his younger brother who was by his side till a few moments ago being simply swept away right in front of his eyes. He was crying hoarse and running up to the ambulance every time a body was fished out. Then eventually his worst nightmare turned true, as his brother’s lifeless body emerged from the earth.

Limping on an injured leg, Moni Mandal had no clue whether to thank his stars or curse his fate that left him alive to live through the nightmare. “I was almost buried and had the soil up to my chin when I was dragged out by someone,” he said. But there was nothing to rejoice, and he buried his face in his hands as it emerged that four of his friends were not as fortunate.

Kabir, a worker who was among the first to come to the rescue, was furious that there was zero safety measures for such a dangerous work, while Abid Biswas, another worker, said they would not have accepted the work had they realised how dangerous it was.

The agitated workers wanted to participate in the operation to rescue their colleagues and relatives. “We cannot let them do it lest another tragedy happens,” said a cop deployed on the site.

But there were unanswered questions. Why was the land-filled plot dug up so deep and why was no safety route planned while trenching up the elongated pit were some of them.

When asked about the alleged neglect of safety measures, Vrinda Devi, Deputy Collector, District Disaster Management Authority, said rescue was the priority, and everything else could wait.