Two siblings drown in open sewage tank at spinning mill in Namakkal

Namakkal: Two young children of a guest worker from Odisha, drowned in an unsecured sewage tank at a private spinning mill near Pallipalayam in Namakkal district, on Sunday evening.The deceased have been identified as Logan Kumar, 4, and Hari Shankar, 3, sons of Manoj Kumar Pradosh. The family was residing in the mill's residential quarters.The children who went to play outside their home did not return, prompting their father to search for them. He later found their bodies in an open sewage tank opposite their residence. He immediately entered the tank and retrieved his children and rushed them to the government hospital in Pallipalayam. However, doctors declared them brought dead.Veppadai police who were alerted, sent the bodies to the Pallipalayam Government Hospital for postmortem. A case has been registered and further investigation is on. "We will take necessary action against the dyeing unit owners based on the outcome of the investigation," said inspector P Sangeetha. Meanwhile, preliminary inquiry revealed that the sewage tank, situated behind a dyeing unit, was placed in a residential area without basic safety measures such as fencing, or a lid with a lock. "We have alerted the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board (TNPCB) to check whether the unit has a licence to run," the inspector said. She added that the police have also called for immediate inspection of all factories in Veppadai, to ensure that protective barriers are installed around sewage and water storage facilities to prevent similar mishaps.