Septic tank fumes kill 3 labourers, house owner at Haryana’s Bahadurgarh

A senior police officer said: “The labourers were not wearing any safety equipment like gloves or masks… Mahendra entered the tank first and fell unconscious after a few seconds. Noticing this, Kuldeep and Deshraj got into the tank and they, too, fell unconscious… eventually Deepak, in a bid to rescue them, entered the septic tank and was asphyxiated.”

All four of them were rushed to the civil hospital in Bahadurgarh where they were declared dead.

A case under IPC section 304A (causing death by negligence) has been lodged.

Said an officer: “Prima facie, it seems the labourers were asked to break the washroom’s floor and clean the septic tank inside it… he (the house owner) asked them to place a gas pipe inside the drainage system… it is suspected the pipe might have burst which led to accumulation of a poisonous gas which choked them. The post-mortem report is still

awaited.”

Mahendra’s wife Kranti (24) said her husband never cleaned septic tanks nor did repair work inside them: “When Deepak asked Mahendra to get the septic tank and the pipe cleaned, he quickly agreed as they would have been paid Rs 800 for the job… he asked the other two men to help him.” Kranti said Mahendra was the sole breadwinner of the family, which includes six-year-old son and four-year-old daughter. “He earned Rs 500 for construction work in a day… I don’t know why he entered the septic tank… he had not got any work for the day so he thought he could earn this money,” said his wife.

Another officer said forensic teams were sent to the spot to examine the type of gas leakage which led to the death of the victims.

In August last year, four workers had died and two were injured allegedly after they inhaled toxic fumes while cleaning sludge from a waste tank at a factory in Bahadurgarh.