Mandi Gobindgarh: Three workers were killed and one was seriously injured on Tuesday in a factory accident in Mandi Gobindgarh, the steel town of Punjab's Fatehgarh Sahib district, after two cranes working inside a factory shed collided and part of the structure fell on the workers below, TV9 Punjabi reported. The dead were identified as Harsh Mishra, Sat Narayan and Lakru; the injured worker, Amrik Singh, is in a critical condition.

Source: TV9 Punjabi

Punjab E News carried the same accident in its Punjab headlines on Tuesday — three workers killed and one injured in a crane collision at a Mandi Gobindgarh factory — and the English report of the incident published by TezzBuzz gave the same account: two cranes moving heavy goods at a height of about 20 feet inside the factory's big shed came face to face and collided, the impact was so strong that a part of the shed structure, along with the crane, broke and fell, and four employees working on the floor were caught under it.

Source: Punjab E News

Three declared dead at hospital, one referred to Chandigarh

Fellow workers pulled the trapped men out from under the debris and rushed them to hospital, and police and relief teams reached the factory after receiving information about the accident. Dr Ritu of the Civil Hospital, Mandi Gobindgarh, said four employees were brought to the hospital and three of them had already died. Amrik Singh was given first aid at the Civil Hospital and, in view of his critical condition, was referred to Chandigarh for higher treatment, the reports said. TV9 Punjabi described the three dead men as migrant workers.

Source: TezzBuzz

What police have said so far

ASI Jag Roop Singh said the initial investigation pointed to the mutual collision of the two cranes and the breakage of the shed structure as the cause of the accident. Police have taken the bodies of the three deceased workers into custody and sent them for post-mortem, and further action is being taken according to the legal process, he said. The reports said the question of responsibility would become clear only after a detailed investigation into the causes of the accident and the safety arrangements at the factory.

What happens next: the post-mortem examinations of the three workers are to be conducted, and the police investigation is expected to establish how the two cranes came to collide inside the shed and whether safety arrangements at the unit were adequate. Amrik Singh's condition in Chandigarh remains critical, according to the reports. No arrest or case registration had been reported at the time of these reports.