Three workers die of asphyxiation at Perambur eatery

Chennai: Three workers of a city-based chain of restaurants died on Saturday after inhaling a noxious gas in a Metrowater sump at its Perambur unit while cleaning it, police said.
While the bodies of Ramakrishna Sankar Rao, 20, Chappa Vinay Vasudeva Rao, 22, and Satish Suryanarayana, 21, all from Vizianagaram in Andhra Pradesh, were sent for postmortem, Kanagaraj, another worker who entered the 16-ft-deep sump, is recovereing at the government general hospital.Police arrested hotel owner G Mohan Rao, 58, and manager S Gopi, 38, under IPC Sections 337 (causing hurt by act endangering life or personal safety of others) and 304 (A) (death caused due to negligence).
Initial police inquiries found that Sankar Rao first stepped into the sump to clean it around 1.30pm. When he didn't return for a long time, Vinay Vasudeva Rao and Suryanarayana followed him in.
When they too didn't surface, Kanagaraj stepped in with a torch and found them unconscious. He shouted out to other workers in the kitchen area where the sump is located but swooned before he could climb out. Other workers informed the management which called police. A team arrived and pulled all the four out.
Soon after the incident, the hotel was locked. While a customer said that all those eating there were asked to leave following the incident, an employee of the hotel said the sump had not been cleaned for the past four years.
The hotel management officials said that they had been facing problems with Metrowater supply for the past 45 days. "We complained to the Metrowater officer concerned and a team of officials arrived on Saturday morning to check. In the afternoon, they informed us that the connection was good at their side and asked us to check the sump in the hotel," an official said. It was while the workers were checking in the sump that the accident took place, he added.
In a statement issued late in the evening, CPI leader G Ramakrishnan said the hotel management should be booked under the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013 and that a compensation of 20 lakh should be provided to the families of the deceased.