Telangana Factory Fire Kills 39 Workers, Probe Underway
They say Monday blues are for office workers. But in Sangareddy, that Monday turned black. Literally.
We are talking about the Telangana factory fire.
At around 2:15 PM, smoke started pouring out of the Sigachi Pharma factory. Not your usual kitchen smoke. This was thick. Black. Heavy. People ran. Some didn’t make it. By the time the fire trucks came, the damage was already done.
Thirty-nine people. Gone.
There were no sirens inside. No alarms. No visible exits on the top floors. Workers either jumped or choked. One of them — Ravi — was on his first week at the job. He never came home. His mother waited outside the hospital till midnight. No news. No update. Then they brought out a bag.
It had his shoes.
Nobody is telling exactly how the fire started. Some say it was a chemical spill. Others think a machine sparked. The factory deals with excipients — the stuff used in making tablets. Dry powders, volatile ingredients, small closed spaces — a recipe for disaster if things go wrong.
Firefighters battled for hours. Water wasn’t enough. They used foam. Even then, flames kept coming back. A senior officer said, “There was too much combustible material stacked without safety distance. It was like walking into a bomb.”
Bodies were found near corners. Some people had tried to run upstairs, thinking there might be a way out from the roof. There wasn’t.
Outside the district hospital, you could see families holding up photos. Some crying. Some just… sitting. Staring.
A woman in her late 30s came running with two boys — maybe 10 or 12. She said her husband worked there. Nobody told her if he was alive. She just kept shouting his name. Nobody answered.
The government has promised ₹5 lakh to each family. But right now, money means nothing. Most of these workers earned ₹10,000 to ₹15,000 a month. Some were the only earners in their home. One boy, barely 20, had joined just last week. His younger sister had her school fees due this week.
Sigachi Industries, the company that owns the factory, issued a short statement. “We are deeply saddened,” it read. That’s it. No apology. No explanation.
Locals are angry. One resident who runs a small kirana shop nearby said, “Every few weeks we smell something from the factory. We’ve complained. Nobody listens. Now 39 people are dead. Will someone listen now?”
The district police have sealed the unit. Investigations are on. But like most such cases, people fear it’ll be buried. Forgotten.
Right now, there are only two questions in everyone’s mind:
Why did this happen?
And couldn’t this have been avoided?
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