A day after a reactor blew up at a bulk drug manufacturing premises in Sangareddy district, the site looked like a war zone with crumpled walls, glass shards lying everywhere. In the morning, the Fire Department officials located and pulled out one more body from under the rubble taking the death toll to six. The explosion at SB Organics Ltd in Hathnoora, located around 52 kilometres from Hyderabad, was felt in a radius of about one kilometre from the site, said witnesses.
The 4.5 acre factory, located about 300 metres left from the highway road in Patancheru, has three units. The explosion was reported in unit 1, said an official from the Fire Department deployed on the spot. The impact of the explosion was such that due to its tremors, all the glass panels from the windows of the second unit in a three-storey building were shattered.
“As per our enquiry, there were about 35 employees in the premises at the time of mishap. About eight to nine of them were in unit 1. According to the management, with the body found in the morning, the number of employees at the plant has been tallied,” informed Srinivas, Regional Fire Officer of Sangareddy.
