Saved after 51 hrs,teen says won’t work in Punjab again

Sanjeev,a migrant labourer from Gopalganj in Bihar,said he was saved because the thread-weaving machine at which he had been working as a cloth cutter tilted on its side as the factory came down. Sanjeev slipped under the machine,which took the load of the debris that rained down.

While rescue teams reached Sanjeev on Tuesday evening,they could bring him out only after midnight — close to three hours later. He survived with only a few injuries on his left thigh.

From his hospital bed,Sanjeev said he was working on the ground floor of the four-storey building at the time of the disaster. “I tried to call friends on the phone,but there was no signal. It was very dark,and I was not able to see anything. I tried to stay calm and leave everything to my destiny. Then,after a long time,I heard someone call out ‘Koi hai (Anybody there)?’. I started shouting,‘Please help me,give me some water’,” said Sanjeev. “Then somebody sent me water and biscuits with the help of a rod. I drank the water; it was like life flowing through me.”

Two others,Vinod and Bhagoo Dass,were working with him on the same machine and Sanjeev doesn’t know what happened to them. His cousin Nitesh died in the collapse.

Commandant R K Verma,in-charge of the National Disaster Response Force whose men brought out Sanjeev,says they heard some sound at the rear end of the factory. “We began digging but could not find anyone. After cutting out the debris,we made a small hole. A volunteer of the Dera Sacha Sauda was sent in. He had a torch and kept shouting ‘Koi hai?’.”

Verma adds that when the torch light first fell on Sanjeev,he mistook it for sunlight,given how long he had been in the dark,and thought the debris above him had been removed. He screamed to be rescued,“but the place was too small to bring him out”,says Verma. “So we told him we would be back soon. We then tied a water bottle and a pack of biscuits at the end of a 10-feet-long rod and passed it to Sanjeev. Meanwhile we put a fan at the hole of the debris so he could breathe. After three hours,he was brought out.”

Sanjeev is worried about what happens now. The sole earning member of his family,with parents and an eight-year-old brother to support,he used to earn Rs 7,000 a month at the factory after a daily 12-hour shift. He sent Rs 4,000 of that back home. His phone and Rs 9,000 that he had managed to save got lost in the collapse.

It was the “hope of a decent livelihood” that brought him and cousin Nitesh to Punjab,Sanjeev says. “While inside the collapsed building,I asked myself several times why I was here,that I’d have been safe back home. However,then I would remember that my family was surviving because I was employed here.”

Now that he is out though,even as he can’t help talking about the machine that saved him,Sanjeev is clear that he does not want to work in Punjab anymore. “I do not want to die here,” he says.