SLBC Tunnel Rescue Op: Project engineer body retrieved

Hyderabad: Body of one of the seven persons who remained trapped inside the partially collapsed SLBC project tunnel here for over a month was found on Tuesday.

This takes the total number of bodies retrieved so far to two. Collector Badavath Santhosh told reporters that the body was found on Tuesday morning. He said "tentatively" the body has been identified to be that of Manoj Kumar, a project engineer from Uttar Pradesh. The body was shifted to a government hospital for postmortem and other procedures as per the norms.

The Collector said the family members of the deceased would be informed about the matter. The mortal remains would be sent to the native place of the deceased. As per the instructions of Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy, an ex gratia of Rs 25 lakh would be handed over to the family members of the deceased, he said.

The Chief Minister has directed that the search operation should continue till all the persons who were trapped in the accident were located, he said. He also said four excavators have been deployed inside the tunnel to expedite the search operation.

Meanwhile, a rescue official told media persons that the body was extricated after the search personnel experienced foul smell in the early hours of Tuesday. The body was recovered from a location other than those suggested by the sniffer dogs deployed earlier in the search operation, he said.

A total of eight individuals—including engineers and labourers—were trapped in the Srisailam Left Bank Canal (SLBC) project tunnel when a portion of it collapsed on February 22. The trapped persons have been identified as Manoj Kumar (UP), Sri Niwas (UP), Sunny Singh (J&K), Gurpreet Singh (Punjab) and Sandeep Sahu, Jegta Xess, Santosh Sahu and Anuj Sahu, all from Jharkhand. The body of Gurpreet Singh, a Tunnel Bornig Machine (TBM) operator, was recovered on March 9 and handed over to his family in Punjab.

As many as 700 personnel belonging to 25 state, central and private agencies are engaged in the operation to locate the seven persons who remained trapped, officials had said.