Women worked for tractor driver
The women who died in the accident in Valigonda were working in the tractor driver — Venkatnarayana’s — agricultural field, for last few days. Venkatnarayana has been picking up the woman from Vemulagonda for the last few days and taking them to his farm.
“He used to come in the tractor to pick the women up and would drop them back in the evening. They earned about `250 for the work,” said a villager.
Most of the families in the village are agricultural workers earning a meagre amount by sowing cotton seeds and harvesting the crop.
In the entire, Yadadri Bhuvangiri district, cotton is cultivated on around 66,000 hectares. The cotton seeds will be sown till the first week of next month and there will be hectic agricultural activity, informed, P. Harinath Babu, district agriculture officer. On Sunday, Venkatnarayana as usual came to the village and all the women boarded the trolley.
“Every day he used to bring one tractor, but on Sunday, he came in another one which is apparently very old,” informed a villager.
Within 15 minutes of leaving for work, we came to know of the accident. “The tractor driver is fully responsible for the accident. Had he been careful, the incident would not have occured,” said Srinivas, a villager. The villagers staged a protest when minister for energy, G. Jagadish Reddy visited, demanding `10 lakh compensation each to the families. Later, they withdrew the agitation after the government assured to pay them compensation of `2 lakh each. The driver fled the scene. “As he was driving the tractor, he jumped down,” a woman said. A case of negligence has been registered against the driver at Valigonda. A 25-year-old man died in his service apartment in Chennai, early on Sunday morning.
The police suspect that a smouldering cigarette butt was the cause of the fire. The deceased was identified as C. Bharathwaj, 25 from Telangana.
According to the police, Bharathwaj had come to Chennai a few days ago and was staying in a service apartment near Mount Kailash near Saidapet Panagal Maligai, which hosts government offices.
“Bharathwaj had worked in Germany and recently returned to India. As his father Chiranjeevi is a businessman, he came to Chennai for business,” the police said.
The fire control room received a distress call at around 5.30 am and two fire engines from Saidapet and Teynampet fire stations were rushed to the spot.
As the fire had spread from the inside of Bharathwaj’s apartment, the firemen had a hard time dousing it and had to break the windows to enter the apartment.
“When the fire personnel doused the fire and went inside, they found the charred body of Bharathwaj on his bed,” the police said.
The Saidapet police retrieved the body and sent it to the Government Royapettah hospital for postmortem.