A pall of gloom descended in the eve of Diwali festival on
Aryanagar, a residential colony located near the Hyderabad road in
this town with four workers losing their lives when they got down into
a septic tank of the Ashoka Apartment which is under construction on
Wednesday evening.
The dead were identified as watchman Shankar (50), Ansari (35), Samad
(38) and Hameed (36). Except Shankar all the three died on the spot,
while the former breathed his last after being shifted to the
Government Teaching Hospital. According to preliminary information,
the watchman belonged to the town while three others were from Coastal
Andhra.
Superintendent of Police, S. Chandrashekar Reddy who rushed to the
spot as soon as he came to know the incident told The Hindu that the
workers stepped into the tank to clean it. Since the tank remained
closed for quite a long time some poisonous gases formed in it. The
apartment was still under construction, he said.
The bodies were shifted to the hospital for postmortem examination.
The Collector D. Ronald Ross also visited the spot.