One body recovered from Telangana tunnel on day 16 of rescue operation

Hyderabad: Rescue workers on Sunday - the 16th day of the operation -  pulled out the body of one of the eight missing persons from the partially collapsed SLBC tunnel in Telangana's Nagarkurnool district after the cadaver dogs from Kerala identified the spot for presence of human remains under the rubble.

The specially trained dogs identified human presence at D-2 point about 100 metres from the accident site in the final stretch of the 14-km-long tunnel.

The rescue workers carefully excavated silt at the identified location and pulled out a body on Sunday evening.

The decomposed body, identified as that of Gurupreet Singh, operator of the Tunnel Boring Machine (BTM) and hailing from Punjab, was shifted to the government hospital at Nagarkurnool for preservation.

The rescue teams continued search for the remaining seven persons in the the Srisailam Left Bank Canal (SLBC) project tunnel.

Four labourers, two engineers and two machine operators, hailing from Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, and Jammu and Kashmir were trapped in the tunnel on February 22 when a portion of the tunnel roof collapsed during the excavation. The seven trapped persons are Manoj Kumar and Sri Niwas (both UP), Sunny Singh (J&K), and Sandeep Sahu, Jegta Xess, Santosh Sahu and Anuj Sahu (all from Jharkhand).

Several agencies of the state and Central governments have been making efforts for the last 15 days to trace the missing persons. The rescue teams also reportedly spotted human parts of a person six feet under the debris on Saturday night. They were carrying out digging work around the location to pull out the body. (IANS)

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