A 50-year-old project engineer’s body was recovered on Tuesday from the partially collapsed Srisailam Left Bank Canal (SLBC) tunnel in Telangana, more than a month after eight people were trapped at the site under construction. District Collector Badavath Santosh confirmed the recovery.
On February 22, eight workers, including engineers and labourers, were trapped when a section of the roof collapsed at the SLBC tunnel in Nagarkurnool district, approximately 120 kilometers from Hyderabad. The rescue teams had to navigate the flooded tunnel using fishing rafts, tyres, and wooden and bamboo planks. On March 9, the first body, Gurpreet Singh, the Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM) operator, was recovered.
The second body has been identified as Manoj Kumar, a 50-year-old project engineer from Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, who worked for JP Associates, the company contracted for the SLBC project. He is survived by his wife, son, and daughter.
“The body has been shifted to the government hospital in Nagarkurnool for a post-mortem, and it will be handed over to his family after completing the necessary formalities,” said the district collector. The body was discovered approximately 50 meters from the conveyor belt on Tuesday morning after rescue workers, digging the final part of the 14km tunnel, noticed a foul smell near the loco train track and alerted officials.
An ex-gratia of ₹25 lakh will be provided to Manoj Kumar’s family, as announced by Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy earlier, Santosh added.
“We will continue the search operations to locate the remaining individuals trapped inside the tunnel,” Santosh said.
The six other workers still unaccounted for are: Sree Niwas (49, field engineer) from Uttar Pradesh, Sandeep Sahu (27, worker) from Jharkhand, Jagta Xess (37, worker) from Jharkhand, Santosh Sahu (37, worker) from Jharkhand, Anuj Sahu (25, worker) from Jharkhand, and Sunny Singh (34, worker) from Jammu & Kashmir.
Manoj Kumar’s brother-in-law, Ashish Tripathi, urged the government to assist the families who lost their breadwinners in the accident. “We understand it was an accident, but we request that the governments help the families of the victims,” he said.
According to Pankaj Gour, managing partner of Jaypee Associates Ltd, the incident occurred during routine excavation work at 8 am on February 22. Workers had noticed cracks in two cement blocks on the tunnel’s roof. Before any response could be made, the blocks collapsed, causing soil and water to rush onto the TBM, where 65 workers were stationed.
“Following the sudden gush of water and mud, some workers rushed to escape, while a few were swept away by the water,” Gour said. “Eight workers, including two engineers and two TBM operators, who were positioned below the machine, had no time to escape and were caught in the flood.”
The collapse also resulted in a power outage, which complicated efforts to locate the trapped workers. “They weren’t in a single place, but scattered around the machine,” Gour added.
Senior forest official S Venkateshwarlu explained that the tunnel’s location falls within the Nallamala Tiger Sanctuary, making it unfeasible to excavate through protected forest land, as it would violate environmental regulations.
The SLBC tunnel is part of a larger irrigation project designed to transfer 30 thousand million cubic feet (tmc ft) of water from the Srisailam reservoir to Nalgonda district. The project, initially started in 2005 under then Chief Minister YS Rajasekhara Reddy, had been halted in 2017 but was recently resumed.
