Two persons trapped inside 60-feet trench in Chennai since Monday

Chennai: It has been over three days that an electrical engineer, R Jayaseelan, and his colleague fell into a 60-feet trench which was dug up for the construction of a building in Chennai on Monday when the city was drenched with extremely heavy rains under the influence of Cyclone Michaung.

And since then, the 32-year-old man’s pregnant wife, Manju, has been camping at the accident site in Velachery, one of the worst-affected areas in the rains, with the hope of seeing her husband. A container with three rooms in which Jayaseelan and his colleague Naresh stayed, a generator, and three compressors, fell into the crater due to the impact of the heavy rains.

For the past three days, rescue personnel have deployed several heavy duty motor pumps to drain out the water from the 60-feet trench, but with little success. Officials present at the spot said giant pumps from the Neyveli Lignite Corporation (NLC) have also been deployed to drain the water out of the carter, even as the family is running out of patience.

“We don’t know what is being done by the authorities to help save the two people who have been trapped inside the container. It is going to be four days and there is no clarity on when water will be pumped out and the operation to rescue them will begin,” Jayan, a relative of Jayaseelan, said.

The couple got married a year ago and Manju is now pregnant – she last spoke to her husband on Monday morning when he was working at the site after his company, Green Tech Construction, asked him to report to work despite the government declaring a public holiday.

“My sister was speaking to my brother-in-law when the phone went silent. She has been inconsolable since then,” Jayan added, and complained that the company has so far not come forward with any explanation on how the accident took place.

Chief Secretary Shiv Das Meena said the Tamil Nadu Police, and NDRF teams were at the site trying to reach the trapped people. "We have deployed several motors to pump out the water from the trench so that we can recover the container. We are taking every step possible to reach them," Meena added.

A senior police officer, who is at the site, said the water draining exercise is at its final stages and that there was at least three to four feet of water above the container. The sister of Naresh, who is also trapped inside the trench, said her brother was allotted to this site only two weeks back and she met him a day before the accident.

“We are told that they couldn’t be saved immediately because there was a gas cylinder in the trench. But three days have passed and there is no word on what has happened to them. We don’t know what to say,” she said.

Manju alleged that no government functionary spoke to her on the incident and that the government should act against the company which forced him to work despite it being a public holiday on account of rain.