Two contractual workers died early on Friday after they apparently got stuck underground while laying a sewer line here, officials said.
The workers, both in their twenties, were laying the pipes late on Thursday night at Salarpur area, about 12 feet down from the ground level, when water from a nearby drain started entering their pit through a crack, an official said.
The two workers, engaged by the Noida Authority via a contractor, had got stuck and could not come up while the polluted water kept filling the pit, the official said.
Police and the fire department were alerted, and the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) was also called in, the officials said.
The bodies of the deceased, Amit and Salman, were retrieved after a nearly four-hour rescue operation by the deep-diving team of the NDRF, an official said.
"We reached the spot at 3.15 am and began the operation at 3.20 am. The first body was recovered at 6.25 am and the second at 7.20 am," Jeetender Yadav, who led the nine-member NDRF team, told PTI.
An FIR has been registered at the Sector 39 police station and the contractor, who was handling the project, has been booked for causing death due to negligence, a police officer said.
No one has been arrested yet and a probe is underway, the officer said.
A contractual junior engineer has been dismissed over the incident, said Rajesh Kumar Singh, the Noida Authority's officer on special duty.
The authority has also blacklisted the contractor to prevent him from undertaking any future projects with it, Singh added.
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