Kasaragod: Two electrical technicians fixing street lights on the newly built Talapady-Chengala stretch of NH 66 died after their crane-mounted man cage slipped off the hook and plunged 10 metres.

The deceased are Ashwin K K (27) of Palayadnada in Maniyoor panchayat near Vadakara, and Akshay S R (25) of Rayarangoth in Chorode panchayat, also near Vadakara. They were employees of the Uralungal Labour Contract Cooperative Society (ULCCS), which is developing the 39-km Talapady-Chengala stretch.

The accident occurred around noon on Thursday, September 11, on the bypass road at Mogral Puthur near Kumbla. "Akshay and Ashwin were experienced electricians and had been with us for the past four years," said ULCCS deputy general manager Ajith Kumar. They were part of the team installing and maintaining street lights on the highway. "They installed street lights on 35 km of the 39-km stretch. Today, they had started replacing faulty lights," he said on Thursday.

After finishing work on one streetlamp, the boom lift crane was being lowered when the man basket slipped off the hook and crashed onto the service road. Ajith Kumar said the two had not strapped on safety belts. "They were supposed to hook their safety belts on opposite corners of the cage to balance it, but both moved to one side, tilting the cage and causing it to slip from the hook," he said.

The crane-mounted man cage slipped off the hook and fell 10 metres onto the service road; a fall onto the carriageway would have been only five metres.

The workers were rushed to Kumbla Cooperative Hospital, where Akshay was declared dead on arrival. Ashwin was shifted to a hospital in Mangaluru, where he later succumbed to his injuries.

Two days earlier, on September 9, another worker, Rakhi Bul Haq (27) from Assam, died after falling from the Cherkala overbridge on the Chengala-Nileshwar stretch of the highway, being developed by Megha Engineering Infrastructure Limited (MEIL).

On July 15, two workers engaged in the review of the Advanced Traffic Management System (ATMS) were killed when a truck rammed into their stationary pickup van near Manjeshwar. The victims were identified as Raja Kumar Mahto (27), son of Arun Mahto from Damodarpur Mahuli in Bihar’s Samastipur district, and Amit Damor Ganpat Bhai (25), son of Ganpat Meena from Tokwasa in Rajasthan’s Dungarpur district. They were contract employees of Aarya, a Gujarat-based ITES company contracted by ULCCS to install ATMS infrastructure on the Talapady-Cherkala stretch.