Latest news with #Pashamylaram
Washington Post
5 hours ago
- Health
- Washington Post
Explosion at pharmaceutical factory in south India kills at least 36
At least 36 people were killed and dozens more injured in an explosion at a pharmaceutical factory in the southern Indian state of Telangana, state authorities said. The death toll is expected to rise as rescue workers continue to search the site following Monday's blast. Dozens of people remain missing. The blast occurred around 9 a.m. local time Monday at a plant in Pashamylaram, some 30 miles west of Hyderabad, the state capital. According to reports by local outlets, the explosion flattened a 4-story building and threw workers hundreds of feet. More than 140 people were on-site when the explosion occurred, officials told reporters. The bodies were 'badly burnt and mutilated,' Telangana Health Minister Damodar Raja Narasimha told the AP, and DNA tests were necessary to identify remains. The cause of the explosion is under investigation. Photos from the scene show rubble heaped stories high. The Telangana state government and Sigachi Industries, the operator of the factory, are set to pay 10 million rupees, around $117,000, to family members of each of the deceased, Telangana Chief Minister Revanth Reddy said in televised remarks. Injured workers are also set to receive compensation. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed his condolences on X and pledged an additional 200,000 rupees, around $2,300, to the families of the deceased. The Pashamylaram plant is one of Sigachi's three manufacturing units, according to company documentation. India is the third-largest pharmaceutical industry in the world by volume and the leading supplier of generic medicines and vaccines. Labor and human rights watchdogs have warned of inadequate safety measures and lax oversight in some Indian factories. In a 2020 report on human rights in India, the U.S. State Department found that health and safety inspection capacity was insufficient and enforcement often poor. Global union federation InustriALL said that some 235 workers died across 116 industrial accidents in India between May 2020 and June 2021, according to media accounts and reports by the group's affiliates. The Pashamylaram blast came after a series of industrial accidents in the country. An August explosion at a chemical plant in Atchutapuram, in the neighboring state of Andhra Pradesh, left 17 workers dead. In May 2024, two unrelated explosions at chemical factories in Mumbai and the eastern state of Chhattisgarh killed at least 11, according to news items published by Britain's Royal Society of Chemistry. The 1984 Bhopal disaster, the world's worst industrial accident, occurred when a leak at a pesticide plant exposed hundreds of thousands of people in the central Indian city of Bhopal to a highly toxic gas and left a death toll in the thousands.
Hans India
17 hours ago
- Hans India
Sigachi Factory Disaster Claims 35 Lives; Families Await News of Missing Loved Ones
Hyderabad latest news: In the morning hours of Monday, an explosion at Sigachi industries has left at least 42 people dead and many more injured. Prime Minister Modi sent his condolences and announced a compensation package for the victims. The toll due to the Telangana factory tragedy at a multi-storey chemical plant in Medak district of Telangana rose to 35 till Tuesday morning, with several workers injured and many others missing. The rescue operations continued for the second day on Tuesday and officials said the toll was likely to increase as the rescue teams were still removing debris to search for some people trapped under the debris. 'In a major industrial accident, 35 people were killed and several are injured,' the health department in the southern state of Telangana said in a statement. Officially confirmed 35 deaths so far in the government area hospital at Patancheru, where post-mortem was being conducted. Workers in the plant are from different states including Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand, Odisha, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal. As per the directions of state health minister Damodar Raja Narsimha, health officials sent a team of forensic doctors to the area hospital to identify the bodies. Forensic Science Laboratory has also made available its DNA analysis team to aid in the identification. Telangana factory blast death toll of nearly 200 people from fire services, SDRF and NDRF teams have reached the site and are involved in the rescue operations. Dryer malfunction behind Telangana factory blast On Monday morning, a building was brought down to rubble in Pashamylaram blast at the Rs 500-crore Sigachi Industries. Investigators believe a dryer in the quality control unit of the plant malfunctioned and led to the blast. 'General manager A Loganan, who was in-charge of attendance, was also killed. It has become difficult to know who was in the building,' a fire official said. Loganan had just got down from his car when the blast ripped through the factory premises located around 50km from Hyderabad.
