Telangana tunnel collapse: Cadaver dogs of Kerala Police locate 2 bodies

Cadaver dogs of Kerala Police on Friday evening (March 7) located two bodies inside the partially collapsed SLBC tunnel in Telangana's Nagarkurnool, the state’s Disaster Management commissioner Arvind Kumar said.

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The cadaver dogs and their handlers joined the rescue operation and went inside the tunnel to locate the presence of humans. The cadaver dogs of the Belgian Malinois breed can detect smells even from a depth of 15 feet, officials said.

8 people trapped

Eight persons – engineers and labourers – have been trapped in the Srisailam Left Bank Canal (SLBC) project tunnel since February 22, and experts from the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), Indian Army, Navy and other agencies are making relentless efforts in rescue operations.

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Kumar told The Federal Telangana that the excavations have been intensified in both areas identified by the cadaver dogs, which were brought to the tunnel by an Indian Air Force (IAF) helicopter from Kerala.

On Friday morning, the cadaver dogs sniffed the tunnel. After the guards identified the areas where the bodies were, NDRF and military officials who entered the field intensified digging.

Robotic experts, IIT professor join rescue operations

A four-member team of ANVI robotic experts also went inside the SLBC tunnel at 11:25 am on Friday. An IIT Madras professor, who was accompanying the robotic experts, also entered and inspected the rescue work. An NDRF official told The Federal Telangana that cadaver dogs are searching for the bodies of the labourers trapped inside the tunnel.

Kumar has camped himself outside the tunnel and is providing necessary support to the rescuers while Nagarkurnool District Collector Badawat Santosh and SP Vaibhav Gaikwad Raghunath are overseeing the rescue operations.