Ten workers of a tannery unit in Ranipet, 120-km south of Chennai, were killed on Saturday morning when they were drowned in toxic waste bursting out of the sludge storage tank of the Common Effluent Treatment Plant at SIDCO Industrial Estate. Nine of those killed in the disaster were from Midnapore district in West Bengal. Those who lost lives have been identified as Abeeb Khan and his two sons Ali Akbar and Ali Ankar (from Vidyapur Saltawani), Shajahan, Kutub Khan (brothers), Akram, Eshyam, Pyar and Habbeb (all from Balrampur). G Sampath, the security guard who drowned in the toxic waste was from Tamil Nadu.
The dead were fast asleep when the mishap occurred. The sludge storage tank was part of the 2,500 cubic metre per day CETP and was servicing 79 tanneries in the area. The Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board has ordered the closure of the CETP as well as all the 79 tanneries which were dependent on the plnt. According to Vellore Police, the concrete wall of the sludge storage tank built in 1995 collapsed resulting in the first major disaster of the year in Tamil Nadu.