Four workers die of electrocution in Maharashtra's Aurangabad district

Four contractual workers engaged in a power project died from electrocution on Friday in a village in Aurangabad district of central Maharashtra, police said. The incident took place around 3 pm at Hiwarkheda-Nandgirwad village in the district, about 375km from Mumbai, where work on providing new electricity connection and installing transformers was going on, they said. The deceased were identified by the police as Ganesh Thete (30), Jagdish Murkunde (35), Bharat Warkad (32) and Arjun Magar. Their bodies were sent to hospitals at Kannad and Ghati towns for completion of certain formalities before they are handed over to respective families, an official from the Kannad Rural police station said. All the deceased were contractual workers of a private firm and were engaged in providing new electricity connection and installing transformers, he said. The workers, carrying power cables in bare hands, entered a papaya farm, where its owner, a farmer, had made an electric fencing to protect the fruit, he said. As they entered the farm and started their work, all the four suffered severe electric shocks and died on the spot, the official said. The process of registering an FIR against the farmer (who owns the papaya farm), the wireman of the project and others was underway, he said.