By Two workers died and four needed to be hospitalised after they inhaled toxic gases while cleaning an underground tank at a jewellery manufacturing unit in north Delhi’s Adarsh Nagar on Sunday evening, the police said.
Of the four hospitalised, three were discharged after treatment while the fourth continues to receive treatment.
Vijayanta Arya, the deputy commissioner of police (north-west), said that a case of culpable homicide not amounting to murder has been registered and two persons have been arrested. “We have arrested the factory owner Rajender Soni and the cleaning contractor Pramod Dangi,” the DCP said.
The two dead men, Idris and Salim—both 45 years old, were among a gaggle of seven daily wage labourers who had arrived from Khurja in Uttar Pradesh to seek out work in the national capital.
The DCP said that they found work at a jewellery manufacturing unit in an industrial area in Adarsh Nagar.
“The unit makes golf and silver chains. They store chemicals and water for cleaning the precious metals in a safety tank. It was this tank that needed to be cleaned,” said the DCP.
The factory owner had allegedly outsourced the work to the contractor, Dangi.
The police received a call about the mishap around 6.45pm on Sunday. They arrived at the spot to find two workers unconscious and four others in need of treatment. Only the seventh worker was unaffected, the DCP said.
They were all rushed to Babu Jagjivan Ram Hospital, where Idris and Salim died.
The police are investigating the owner and contractor’s negligence brought about the deaths.
