Jalandhar: A teenage boy was pulled out from the debris of the collapsed blanket factory here Wednesday, nearly 55 hours after the four-storey building had been flattened, police said.
Many more people could still be trapped, officials said as rescue efforts continued for the third day. Sandeep, 17, a worker in the Shital Fibres factory was pulled out by rescue teams early Wednesday.
According to authorities, the death toll has reached 10 and could rise with many more still under the debris of the factory in Focal Point area in Jalandhar, about 150 km from here. Rescuers and police said that the young man had no major injuries despite being buried under heaps of concrete and iron since Sunday midnight.
He was rushed to the hospital for medical attention.”He had been located on Tuesday evening itself by our rescue teams. We had started giving him food and water. However, he was finally taken out on Wednesday morning only after creating a tunnel in the debris to reach him,” an official of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) here said.
The rescued man told the teams that there were bodies of other workers of the factory lying close to the place where he was trapped. He said most of them were dead.Over 100 workers could still be trapped under the debris, according to unconfirmed reports. 60 workers had been rescued from the debris of the collapsed building, police said. The owner of the unit, Jalandhar-based industrialist Shital Vij, was arrested Monday night and booked for culpable homicide not amounting to murder. (IANS)