7 suffocated to death while cleaning hotel sewer in Gujarat's Vadodara

Dabhoi police and fire officers were rushed to the spot to retrieve their bodies.

Screenshot taken from the video uploaded by our affiliate ABP Asmita on YouTube.

Vadodara:  Seven persons, including four sanitation workers, died due to asphyxiation on Saturday while cleaning sewer of a hotel in Gujarat’s Vadodara district. The tragic incident occurred at a hotel in Fartikui village in Dabhoi tehsil, about 30 kms from Vadodara city. Among the seven deceased, four were sanitation workers and the other three were hotel employees who had been called for assistance. Reports say the Dabhoi police have booked the owner of the hotel under the charges of culpable homicide not amounting to murder. The death was caused due to utter negligence.  However, the hotel owner has not been arrested yet. “When one sanitation worker failed to come out of the manhole, others went inside. All of them died due to asphyxiation,” the district collector Kiran Zaveri told news agency PTI. Dabhoi police and fire officers were rushed to the spot to retrieve their bodies. Speaking about the incident, Deputy Superintendent of Police, Dabhoi division, Kalpesh Solanki told The Indian Express, “Four cleaners were given the task of cleaning the tank, we presume that one of them entered the tank and suffocated due to some kind of gas leakage. When he did not come out, others jumped in to check on him and faced a similar fate. Three of them were hotel staff members themselves. We are investigating what was the exact gas they inhaled and what exactly happened.”