Two persons died and as many others fell ill after inhaling a poisonous gas inside a well in Chhattisgarh's Surajpur district, police said Tuesday.
The victims entered the well located in a house in Patrapali village late Sunday night to rescue a cow who accidentally fell into it, Superintendent of Police Girija Shankar Jaiswal said.
Initially, a person residing in the neighbourhood went into the water body with the help of a rope but he fell unconscious there after inhaling a poisonous gas and did not come out, he said.
Subsequently, another neighbour went inside but he also fell unconscious and failed to come out, he said.
Later, two more persons entered the well, but when all the four did not come out, the villagers alerted the police who reached the spot and launched a rescue operation, he said.
Two persons were later pulled out of the well in an unconscious condition with the help of villagers and shifted to a local hospital where they were undergoing treatment, Jaiswal said.
The bodies of two others, identified as Ganpat Singh (35) and Ramnarayan Singh (33), and the cattle's carcass were fished out on Monday evening after hectic efforts by a team of the State Disaster Response Force, he said.
"Prime facie, it is suspected that they died after inhaling some poisonous gas," the official said, adding that the exact cause of death will be known in the autopsy report.
A case was registered in connection with the incident, he said.
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