At least 36 people were killed and several others injured after an explosion and fire ripped through a pharmaceutical factory in the southern Indian state of Telangana on Monday, according to a local official.
Fire crews recovered around three dozen bodies from a collapsed factory building, G.V. Narayana Rao, the director of the state’s fire department told Bloomberg on Tuesday. Rao added about 36 people were injured and several other employees were missing.
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“We are almost at the end of the recovery process and we are trying to ascertain if there is anyone else buried in the debris,” said Rao.
The blast occurred in the spray dryer section of a Sigachi Industries Ltd facility. The company said it has halted operations and is working with authorities to assess the damage and identify the cause. Shares of Sigachi, listed in Mumbai, have plummeted as much as 19 percent since the accident.
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Sigachi manufactures chemical products, including excipients, binders and functional fillers. Its Hyderabad unit produces 6,000 of the company’s 21,700 annual tons of microcrystalline cellulose.
The chemicals and pharmaceutical sector in India is prone to accidents, and the explosion at Sigachi’s plant is one of the worst in recent years. In 1984, a gas leak in Union Carbide’s pesticides factory in Bhopal killed more than 3,500 people and exposed hundreds of thousands more to the toxic chemicals.