Kannur: A second migrant worker has died in less than two weeks during the six-laning of NH-66 in Kerala. Biyas Oron (34), a native of Jharkhand, was buried alive on Tuesday when a section of earth gave way while he was fixing shuttering plates to build the retaining wall at Chalukunnu in Kannur city on Saturday.

The incident occurred on the 30-km Taliparamba-Muzhappilangad stretch, being developed by Hyderabad-based Vishwa Samudra Engineering Pvt Ltd for ₹2,038 crore. The same company is also building the 31.5-km Kottukulangara–Kollam bypass for ₹1,580 crore on the same highway.

According to local shop owners in Chalakkunnu, heavy rain began around 3 pm. Biyas and other workers were fixing the plates to pour the concrete mix when the vertically sliced earth gave away at the base. "Within 15 to 20 minutes, we heard there had been a landslip and a worker was buried," said Gireeshan Chalakkunnu, who runs a shop nearby. He said the base of the hillock was not the hard laterite but soft, silty white clay -- a powdery, non-cohesive soil highly susceptible to erosion. Rescue workers pulled Biyas from the debris and rushed him to MIMS Hospital in Chala, where he was declared dead.

The India Meteorological Department (IMD) issued a red alert for Kannur on Saturday, forecasting extremely heavy rainfall of 20.44 cm. Despite this, construction activity was reportedly ongoing.

Twelve days ago, on May 12, an 18-year-old worker, Mumtaj Mir from West Bengal, died when he too was fixing the shuttering plates for the retaining wall. The vertically sliced hill caved in at the base and buried him at Mattalayi in Kasaragod’s Cheruvathur. Two of his co-workers, Mohan Thejar, also 18, and Munlal Laskar (55) -- also from West Bengal -- were buried waist-deep and sustained leg fractures.

Since the monsoon's arrival last week, cracks, landslips, and cave-ins have been reported along several NH-66 construction sites in Kasaragod, Kannur, Kozhikode, and Malappuram -- exposing the poor quality of work.
The deaths of Biyas and Mumtaj lay bare the utter lack of safety for men brought in from distant states to build Kerala's highways, said Kannur city councillor from Challa Mohanan T O. "The accidents are rising because of the mad rush to complete the project by December. But the government is putting the lives of poor workers at risk," he said.