Rescue operations at at Khoni Nallah on the Jammu-Srinagar national highway in Ramban district. (Photo: ANI)Rescue teams looking for nine labourers buried under the debris of an under-construction adit tunnel in Jammu and Kashmir’s Ramban district recovered the bodies of all of them on Saturday.
With this, the death toll in Thursday night’s tunnel collapse at Makerkote near Ramsu rose to ten. The rescue teams on Friday afternoon recovered the body of a labourer who along with others had got buried under the debris.
The deceased labourers were identified as Jadav Roy (23), Gautam Roy (22), Sudhir Roy (31), Dipak Roy (33), Parimal Roy (38), all from West Bengal; Shiva Chowhn (26) from Assam; Nawaraj Chowdhury (26) and Khushi Ram (25), both from Nepal; Muzaffar (38) and Israt (30), both locals.
The recoveries followed the resumption on Saturday morning of the rescue operation, which was suspended the previous night after a fresh landslide at the tunnel site.
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Over a dozen labourers were buried alive after an under-construction adit tunnel to the T3 tunnel collapsed on Thursday night. They had only punctured three meters of the hillside on the Makerkote side of the tunnel when the accident took place, sources said, adding that three labourers were rescued during the first two hours and rushed to hospital.
The collapsed adit tunnel is part of the T3 tunnel being built to bypass the landslide-prone Panthiyal stretch along the Jammu-Srinagar national highway where people are killed every year after getting hit by stones falling from hill sides. The road also remains blocked frequently thanks to landslides.
At least five tunnels are being constructed to bypass this three-kilometre-long “killer’’ stretch from Panthyal to Makerkote, sources said. A number of tunnels are under construction as part of the road-widening work along the national highway, but this has been the first such accident, they added.
An open first information report under Sections 287, 336, 337 & 304A was registered at the Ramban police station.
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