Fifteen people, including a policeman, died of electrocution at a sewage treatment plant of the Namami Gange project on the banks of the Alaknanda in Uttarakhand’s Chamoli district on Wednesday.
District magistrate Himanshu Khurana said: “Fifteen people were electrocuted and 11 sustained injuries. The condition of six of the injured persons is said to be critical. They have been admitted to AIIMS Rishikesh.”
Amit Saxena, executive engineer of the electricity department, said: “The third phase of electricity supply was disrupted on Tuesday night. We connected it to another phase. Perhaps there was a surge of electricity at the sewage treatment plant.”
An eyewitness told reporters that the family members of a caretaker came looking for him at the project site on Wednesday morning and found him lying dead there. “They didn’t realise he was electrocuted. They called the police. When the cop and a few other people went near the body, they too were electrocuted.”
Pipatkothi police station in-charge Pradeep Rawat was the policeman killed.
“We had heard an explosion in the power transformer late at night but didn’t come out of our houses because of heavy rainfall. There were live wires a few yards away from the spot where the caretaker was found dead,” said the villager who didn’t want to be identified.
Launched in 2014, Namami Gange is an ambitious project of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to conserve and rejuvenate the Ganga. The Alaknanda and the Bhagirathi are two source streams of the Ganga.
