DEHRADUN: The tunnel has collapsed. Water and silt flood the narrow passage.
Deep underground, there are eight men – trapped, unheard, unseen. At the mouth of the Srisailam Left Bank Canal (SLBC) in Telangana, hundreds of rescuers battle against time, fighting to bring them back.
Among them are three men who have been there before – and done that. Though in a different catastrophe, high up in the hills of Uttarakhand.
Over a year ago, they had stood at the opening of another collapsed tunnel, overseeing another desperate mission. Then, too, hope hung by a thread. A diary entry would perhaps read: Silkyara, Uttarkashi. 41 men, 17 days.
In the swirling dust and tension, the men who once defied the odds in Uttarakhand are fighting to do it again in Telangana even as they admit the battle this time is harder.
‘In Silkyara we could hear them, here it’s just silence’
A senior supervisor from the Silkyara tunnel project, Shashi Bhushan Chauhan, now standing at the SLBC collapse site, told TOI on Wednesday: “Life has come full circle for us.” The words hang heavy in the damp air, thick with the smell of wet earth and diesel fumes. His voice is hoarse with exhaustion. It was in Nov 2023 that Chauhan first became a footnote in history, working beside an auger machine in the race to free the workers trapped inside Silkyara’s blocked tunnel.
This time, the crisis is different. The SLBC tunnel is narrower – just 33 feet wide compared to Silkyara’s 45 feet. The tunnel boring machine (TBM) is stuck. Water and sludge keep pushing in. Communication lines? Non-existent. The men trapped in are silent. And silence is the worst kind of omen in a rescue mission. But Chauhan and his team – a mechanic and an industrial fabricator from the Navayuga Group – do not deal in omens. They deal in steel, sweat, and a deep, unspoken understanding of what it means to pull men from the earth before it swallows them.
“The teamwork feels the same as it did in Silkyara – everyone pushing forward, driven by a single mission,” Chauhan said. “But there’s one crucial difference. In Silkyara, we could hear them. We knew they were there, that they were holding on. Here, there’s only silence. No voices, no signals, nothing. That uncertainty makes this even harder. We don’t know their condition, and that makes every second feel heavier.”
Another rescuer explains why this operation is even more challenging. “The auger machine we used in Silkyara? That’s not an option here. There’s too much water, too much silt. The ground is shifting, unpredictable. We dewater, and more water rushes in. We clear the silt, and fresh sludge takes its place. Every step forward feels like one step back.”
Hope, however, comes in the form of men who are built for the impossible. A six-member crew of ‘rat-hole miners‘, the underground warriors who crawled through Silkyara’s debris to bring the last workers to safety, are standing by, ready to descend into the unknown again.
“Our team arrived on Sunday. We’re waiting,” says Wakeel Hasan, their leader. “When the moment comes, we go in.” No bravado, no unnecessary words.
Just the quiet, unwavering certainty of men who have walked into darkness before and come out carrying lives.