NEW DELHI: The rescue team on Sunday recovered one body from the Srisailam Left Bank Canal (SLBC) tunnel which collapsed on February 22, trapping eight workers. The body was found stuck in a machine with only hand visible, the officials said.
“We found one dead body stuck in the machine, with only the hand visible. The rescue teams are currently cutting the machine to retrieve the stuck body,” an official informed.
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Meanwhile, the Kerala cadaver dog squad, brought in to aid the rescue efforts, has discovered human remains inside the tunnel.
Here are top developments in the story:
Cadaver dogs detect foul smell
As the rescue operation reached 17th day, the cadaver dogs were deployed inside the partially collapsed SLBC tunnel. Telangana irrigation and civil supplies minister Uttam Kumar Reddy said that the dogs detected a strong odour at a specific location, suggesting the presence of three individuals.
He assured that the government would extend full support to the families of the missing workers. The minister also assessed the ongoing dewatering and desilting efforts, confirming that further updates would follow after a review on March 11.
Robotic technology deployed
Reddy on Saturday announced that robotic technology had been brought in to speed up the rescue operations to locate the trapped workers.
Describing the incident as a national disaster, he stressed that the state government was leveraging advanced global technology to tackle challenges in the final stretch of the 14-kilometre tunnel.
“The usage of bots for the last 70 meters (at the accident site) was discussed with (concerned) agency and robots will be placed and tried from Tuesday onwards, in addition to all the efforts which are being undertaken now,” a senior official told PTI.
Despite two weeks of continuous efforts by 11 national-level rescue teams, locating and retrieving the trapped workers remains a major challenge. The government is consulting global tunnel construction and rescue experts to determine the safest approach.
The crisis began on February 22, when a three-metre section of the roof of an under-construction SLBC tunnel collapsed at the 14 km mark near Domalapenta in Telangana’s Nagarkurnool district—just four days after construction had resumed following a long hiatus. While some workers managed to escape, eight got trapped