The police here along with ODRAF and some technical persons of the Rourkela Steel Plant continued a search operation on Sunday, in a waste disposal tunnel, where four persons are suspected to have died.
This was following recovery of a body on Saturday in the context of missing of a few persons whose family members are claiming that they left home promising to return within a short time but did not.
According to sources, after the day- long search operation on Sunday, the recovery team could not recover any bodies from the spot though it has located a few bodies inside the tunnel through torch light. It is becoming difficult for the recovery team to fish them out because of the odd position of the tunnel.
The body which was recovered on Saturday evening was identified as Gahan lohar, a resident of Sitalpada basti area of the city. The family members of Gahan confirmed the identity, but the body was shifted to a morgue house. The family members of the other four missing persons, however, kept waiting at the recovery site, throughout the day, expecting that the bodies of their kin might be recovered at any point of time.
Rourkela SP US Das visited the spot on Sunday and took stock of the situation. Senior RSP officials like Subhendra Das, Executive Director (Works) and P K Pradhan, Executive Director (Personnel and Administration) were also present.
Sources said the recovery team plans to break the tunnel to recover the bodies. More numbers of JCBs were pressed into service for clearing the scrap heaps, which are deposited above the tunnel, so that the tunnel can be broken and bodies can be taken out.
“The RSP officials will have to provide drawing to break the tunnel if necessary," said Rourkela SP Das.