GHAZIABAD: The owner of an illegal pickle-making factory in Ghaziabad, his son and a labourer died of suspected suffocation on Sunday morning when they descended into a 10ft-deep tank where raw materials were mixed with water and other chemicals.Police said Praveen Jaiswal (35), the owner’s son, had descended into the tank first with the help of a ladder and collapsed within seconds. Seeing this, his 60-year-old father Luv Kush Jaiswal, a Delhi resident, got down to rescue his son, but he, too, fainted. Hriday Raj Dubey, a labourer from the locality in Tronica City, rushed to rescue the father-son duo, but he also fell into the knee-deep water that was there at the tank.Police said the pickle-making unit had been operating from a 50 square yard house in Daulat Nagar of Tronica City for the past three years.The tank, in which the three men died, is 10ft deep and spans 8x12sqft, and was used to mix raw materials with spices and preservatives. On Sunday, it was filled with knee-deep water.A local resident informed police and the police outpost in-charge, Harendra Pal Singh, reached the spot.“Singh hammered a hole into one of the walls of the factory to let out toxic gases, if any. After a few minutes, with the help of the crowd that had gathered, he filled the tank with more water through a pipe attached to a submersible pump in a nearby house. After waiting a while, the police officer entered the house through the main gate and descended into the tank using the wooden ladder. He fished out the bodies one by one with the help of a rope,” said Praveen Bansal, a local resident.An NDRF team later reached the spot, but the bodies had been taken out by then.“A 10-member team was rushed to the factory with safety gear and chemical and biological analysis equipment. But by then, the police had recovered all the bodies. Our officials examined the house where the factory had been set up and found high levels of carbon monoxide and hydrogen sulphide,” NDRF spokesperson Vasant Pawade said.Police said it was a local resident, Gaurav Puri, who had called up the control room around 9.30am. “The factory had been running surreptitiously from a single-room house. From outside, no one could tell there was a factory with a tank running in it. The remaining portion of the area, apart from the tank, was used to store raw materials, chemicals and pickles inside drums. The factory owner did not live on the premises,” said Shyam Veer Singh, the SHO of Tronica City police station.Police said Luv Kush Jaiswal lived with his family in Karawal Nagar of Delhi. An FIR under Section 304A of the IPC (causing death due to negligence) has been registered at Tronica City police station. “We took suo motu cognizance of the incident and registered the case. The factory owner has been named as an accused in the FIR even though he died. Investigations will ascertain as to who else is culpable for running of an illegal factory that led to the deaths. Prima facie, the deaths seem to have occurred from suffocation. But we are awaiting the autopsy report to know the exact cause,” Ghaziabad SSP Vaibhav Krishna said.Sources said the factory had been closed for 15 days and the owner and his son had come to resume production on Sunday.“After talking to local people, it appears the pickle factory had been shut for the past 15 days. The father-son duo had arrived at the unit on Sunday morning. They had entered inside the tank to clean it probably to resume production,” additional district magistrate Jeetendra Sharma said.

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