One labourer died while five were injured when a freshly dug trench caved at a government project in Lucknow. After nearly three hours of the incident, the district administration blamed the accident on a private contractor.
Lucknow district police chief Rajiv Krishna said, "The victims were engaged by one SAS builders, who were constructing a residential complex on Jopling Road where the tragedy occurred."
However, two of the injured labourers claimed that they were working at the Ambedkar Memorial that is in the final stages of construction. "We belong to Sitapur so we do not know the name of the place where we were engaged to work but I can tell you it was a big area with a statue of Mayawati and Kanshi Ram, besides a number of stone elephants," said Mustaqeem and Sunder, two of the injured workers.
The state government had apparently got into the denial mode only on account of a Supreme Court order that had prohibited any construction activity at the site.
"The dead man has been identified as Prabhu and we are sending his body for post-mortem after which we will make arrangements to have the body transported to his home", said a district official at the
hospital.
