Thaindian News

Shimla, Feb 14 (IANS) Seventeen labourers, most of them from Jharkhand and Bihar, were killed Tuesday when their vehicle skidded off an icy road and rolled down a 200-ft-deep gorge in Himachal Pradesh’s Kinnaur district, police said.

While the 17 labourers who worked for the General Reserve Engineer Force (GREF)- a wing of the Border Roads Organisation that maintains the highways passing through rugged Himalayan ranges - died on the spot, two others were admitted to a nearby hospital, said Superintendent of Police Veena Bharti.

The accident occurred near Spillo in Pooh subdivision, some 30 km from the district headquarters Rekong Peo and 300 km from Shimla, Bharti told IANS on phone.

The labourers, who were involved in road construction, had left Spillo for Pooh in the GREF tipper for work. “Since it was snowing heavily in Pooh, the labourers were sent back to their base camp in Spillo. When they were returning, their vehicle met with an accident at 12.45 p.m.,” she said.

Prima facie, it seemed that the accident occurred due to heavy snowfall, Bharti added.

One of the injured jumped off the vehicle as it lost control and veered off the road, eyewitnesses said. The dead included one five-year-old child.

The entire Kinnaur district, one of the remotest places in the state, has been experiencing snowfall for the past two days.

Chief Minister Prem Kumar Dhumal has expressed grief over the death of the labourers.