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Punjab: In the meat plant of Federal Agro Industries Pvt Ltd located in village Behra of Mohali district of Punjab, four employees died of poisonous gas while cleaning the fat tank on Friday. Three of the deceased were working with a contractor, while one resident of village Behra was permanently employed as a plumber in the company for the last eight years. Enraged by his death, the villagers raised a ruckus accusing the factory managers of negligence.
At the same time, while cleaning the sewerage in Jaula Kalan village of Laldu, one youth died due to poisonous gas, while the condition of the other remains critical. The Derabassi police have taken possession of the four bodies and kept them in the civil hospital and started investigating the case.
The deceased have been identified as Manak Singh (25) resident of village Behra, Janak Thapa (35) resident of Nepal, Girdhar Pandey (25) resident of Bihar and Kurban (35) resident of Bihar.
According to the information, in order to keep the leather safe in a store in the meat plant, they are coated with salt and sprinkled with water daily. This salt water is stored in a storage tank which is drained regularly, while the salt is cleaned after a week.
An employee of the contractor went down to the tank at four o’clock on Friday evening to clean the salt accumulated in the tank but he did not come out. A stampede broke out in the factory when even two workers could not come out to save him. Manak Singh, permanently posted as a plumber in the factory for the last eight years, also went but he too fell unconscious. After this, the four were taken out with great difficulty and taken to the Civil Hospital.
Doctors declared him dead on arrival. While the workers working inside the factory stopped their work on being informed about this, the villagers got angry after the death of Manak, a resident of village Behra. They gathered outside the factory and created a ruckus.
The protestors insisted on going inside the rural factory. He alleged that it was not an accident but the factory managers who killed Manak. The police handled the situation with great difficulty and formed a team of five people from the village and took them inside to inspect the spot.
