6 workers badly burnt in separate accidents at Durgapur plants
The Statesman | 3 December 2025
As many as six labourers suffered critical burn injuries while carrying out their scheduled work in two separate accidents at different factories in Durgapur industrial town today, highlighting the indifference of the respective plant authorities in maintaining proper safety standards.
In the first incident this morning, three contractual labourers – Abhijit Bhuin, Ujjawal Mukherjee and Mrinal Roy – suffered serious burn wounds while they were dismantling the iron structures of a defunct unit of the privately-owned Graphite Electrode Manufacturing Company at Sagarbhanga locality near the Durgapur Railway Station.
The labourers fell on a boiling bed of bituminous liquid. According to Sidhhartha Bose, Citu district secretariat member, West Burdwan, they were dismantling the old iron structures using gas-cutters. The site was filled with frozen tar that started melting due to high temperature emanating from the deployment of the gas cutter.
In the second incident at the Blast Furnace site of SAIL’s Durgapur Steel Plant, two contractual labourers, identified as Sheikh Imran Ali and Sheikh Rajjak Ali, as well as a permanent worker of the plant, Barid Baran Ghosh, were severely burnt while they were fixing a valve using a gas-operated welding machine.
They suffered burn injuries on their faces, chests and hands when the industrial cylinder they were using for the welding suddenly leaked into flames. They were not wearing safety gear. The cylinder, according to a DSP official, was loaded with oxygen and highly inflammable acetylene gas.
In both cases, the scalded and charred workers were shifted to two hospitals, where they are reported to be stable.
Animesh Pramanik, Inspector of Factories, Durgapur expressed disgust at the growing number of such incidents in different production units, especially in the organised steel sector of the Steel Authority of India here. “In past few years, we have registered many cases of safety compromise in these hazardous plants. A good number of prosecutions were made, as we found many accidents could have been averted had there been proper safety arrangements and adequate vigilance,” he said. The incidents today showed how workers were forced to shoulder jobs in hazardous conditions flouting labour laws and the provisions of the Factories Act, 1948.