Five labourers were killed in an accident in Jalna district, Maharashtra, this morning. The workers were staying in a makeshift shed near a bridge construction site on Pasodi Road. At the time of the incident, seven labourers had decided to sleep outside the shed.
A tipper truck driver, reportedly speeding, failed to notice the sleeping workers and unloaded sand on them. Local villagers managed to rescue a small girl from beneath the sand pile.
The weight of the sand caused the tin shed to collapse burying the five workers. Sources said the driver was unaware of the labourers’ presence in the shed. The incident took place at 3.30 am on Saturday on the Pasodi-Chandol Road in Jafrabad taluka of Jalna District. A 12-year-old girl was pulled out alive from the shed.
At 3:30 in the morning, the tipper-truck driver dumped the sand on the shed, crushing six people sleeping in it. A woman who was sleeping nearby noticed the incident and screamed after which the driver fled from the spot.
“The woman then went to the nearby cowshed and called the farmers who removed the sand and pulled out six people. One of them, a 12-year-old girl, was saved, however, the rest were dead,” officials said.
A police official identified the deceased as Ganesh Kashinath Dhanwai (50) and his son Bhushan Dhanwai (17), both residents of Golegaon in Sillod tehsil; Rajendra Dagduba Wagh (40) of Dahid, Buldhana; Sunil Samadhan Sapkal (20) of Padmavati village in Bhokardan tehsil; and Supdu Aher, (38) of Tondapur in Jamner.
All the deceased were close relatives of each other. The project was being carried out by a contractor named Ravindra Anand. Sources said the contractor was illegally mining sand at night