Five persons — comprising three cleaners and two fire brigade personnel — drowned on Thursday afternoon, after they were trapped in accumulated sludge in a temple well at Kalyan in the neighbouring Thane district.
Three persons, who had gone to clean the sticky sludge inside the well located on the Bhimashankar temple located at Netivali area in the eastern part of Kalyan, were stuck inside the well first. The two fire brigade personnel who had gone to rescue the three trapped persons also drowned.
The incident took place at 2.30 pm. While one of the three cleaners killed in the mishap was identified as Rahul Gosawi, the two other workers had not been identified till evening. The police identified the two firemen drowned in the incident as Anant Shelar and Pramod Waghchore.
The incident unfolded at around 1.30 pm, when one person went inside a well to clean it up and got trapped in the sticky sludge. Before long, two other cleaners climbed down into the well, only to be trapped in the sludge.
The fire brigade arrived on the scene immediately afternoon. Two of the fire brigade personnel went into the well to rescue the three cleaners. These two fire brigade personnel were sucked into the thick sludge.
Later in the evening, a team of divers with safety belts, ropes, oxygen cylinders and masks, went into the well and took out the bodies from the well.
Thane’s Deputy Police Police Commissioner (Zone-3) Sanjay Shinde said that the five persons might have been killed after either consumingchemical-laden water or consuming poisonous smell inside the well.