Heavy rain claims six lives in Karnataka

Two of them are labourers who drowned while laying pipes for a residential layout in Bengaluru

Six people, three of them in Bengaluru, lost their lives in separate incidents as heavy rain wreaked havoc across Karnataka on Tuesday.

Two contract labourers died while laying water pipes for a residential layout in Janana Bharathi, while another labourer slipped from a 40 ft. high rooftop of a building in Sompura industrial layout in Dabaspet.

The two labourers, identified as Ankit Kumar Sahani, 23, from Bihar, and Dev Bharath Kushwaha, 37, from Uttar Pradesh, were forced to work overtime while it was raining and drowned in the pipe even as their colleague, Triloki, made futile attempts to pull them out. Triloki, the complainant, also alleged that despite informing the project manager, the site engineer and the labour contractor, they came to the site only the next day to pump out water and pull out the bodies.

The police arrested Shiva Kumar, project manager; Harish Reddy, site engineer; Manoj Yadav, labour contractor; and Narasimharaju, H.R. Manager of Mega Engineering and Infrastructure Estate (MEIL) charging them under causing death by negligence.

Triloki told the police that he, along with eight others, were laying pipes near Ullal lake for the Cauvery fifth stage work by MEIL. The workers wound up work by 4 p.m. on Tuesday when it was started raining. The accused Shivakumar, Harish Reddy, and Manoj Yadav arrived at the spot and asked Triloki, Ankit, and Dev Bharath to stay back to finish wielding work till 9 p.m., and asked the others to go home.

Their request to finish the pending work the next day citing bad weather went in vain, and the they were asked to finish work by 9 p.m., Triloki alleged. Ankit and Dev Bharath then got into the pipes, while Triloki was asked to help them with the required tools. There was no ladder to climb down, and the opening of the 6 ft. deep pipe was as narrow as 2 ft.

Wile they were wielding, rain water began flooding the pipe. The two workers tried to climb up, but as there was no ladder, they drowned. Triloki tried to pull them up, but failed. He raised an alarm for help, but no one was around. He did not have a mobile phone to inform the labour contractor.