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Three people, including the ‘owner and custodian of a plot’ where a coal mine is located, have been booked for culpable homicide not amounting to murder after three labourers died of asphyxiation while digging a well to reopen the mine in Devpara village of Muli taluka in Surendranagar district Thursday.
Three other labourers who fell unconscious were rushed to a hospital and are stable now, Dharmendrasinh Chudasma, police inspector at Muli Police Station where an FIR has been lodged, told The Indian Express.
Two accused — identified as Satvir Karpada and Ranjit Dangar — were arrested Thursday and produced before the magisterial court Friday evening. The court’s rejected the police’s request for a three-day remand and the duo were sent to judicial custody. The third accused — the owner of the land — is yet to be identified. The arrested duo are residents of Ramparda village in Surendranagar. The deceased have been identified as Sarfubhai Harjibhai, Ramdev Rawat and Chandusinh Rawat.
According to the FIR based on a complaint by Harjibhai’s brother-in-law Kadarbhai Behrambhai Merat — a migrant labourer from Rajasthan, the six workers were promised food and a daily wage of Rs 500 for digging the coal mine in the vicinity of Devpara village. They started drilling on February 14 using a spinning machine to clear out the well.
Merat told the police that when he left for lunch around 2 pm Thursday, Chandusinh, Ramdev and another worker Jivansinh were inside the well. However, when he returned around 3 pm and called out to them, there was no answer. “Then Sarfubhai climbed inside. Still there was no response until the rope began to shake.
The bucket appeared heavy, and we pulled out a partially conscious Jivansinh who said that some “poisonous gas” had leaked inside the mine,” Merat stated. He then went down the well to pull out his brother-in-law and the two other men who were unconscious. However, he also became unconscious and couldn’t bring them up. Soon, another worker named Jeevan Singh tied a mask around his face and rescued the three labourers from the well.
Karpada and Dangar took all the labourers to the nearest government hospital where the doctors declared the three labourers dead and sent their bodies for post-mortem.
The labourers alleged that the deaths were caused because they were working without any “helmet or safety equipment”.
The accused have been charged under sections 304 (culpable homicide) and 114 (abettor present when the offence is committed) of the IPC.
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