Sixteen months after Sigachi, two more workers die in Sangareddy. Telangana's drug belt needs inspectors, not cheques

At about a quarter past eleven on Friday night, chloroform began leaking inside Production Unit-2 of Saraka Laboratories in Gaddapotharam, in Telangana’s Sangareddy district. Nobody noticed. By the time anyone did, P Sudarshan Rao, a 44-year-old shift in-charge, and Keelaparthi Balaji, a 29-year-old worker, had collapsed. Both were declared dead on arrival at hospital. Several colleagues, among them a trainee from the safety department, were taken ill.

By Saturday the Pollution Control Board had shut the plant, police had registered a case on a complaint from Sudarshan Rao’s wife, and the company, after talks with the local MLA, had agreed to pay ₹70 lakh to each family. The money was settled within hours. What caused the leak, and why it went undetected, has not been explained at all.

The same district, again

Sangareddy has been here before, and very recently. On 30 June 2025 an explosion tore through the Sigachi Industries plant at Pashamylaram, in the same district, and killed more than 40 people, the worst industrial disaster in Telangana’s history. Families said complaints about ageing machinery had been ignored; the company said its equipment had been recently updated. An expert committee was set up, the company promised ₹1 crore for each family, and the plant was closed for three months.

Saraka is a far smaller accident. But it follows the same pattern: a death toll, a closure order, a compensation figure negotiated in front of a politician, and a promise of inquiry. What rarely follows is a public account of what went wrong and what has been changed in the many other units across the district that handle the same solvents and reactors.

The fair objection

Telangana’s pharmaceutical industry is one of the country’s great success stories, a large employer and exporter. Most units are run responsibly, and an overzealous inspection regime could load small manufacturers with paperwork and delay. Accidents happen even in well-run plants.

That is true, and it is why the answer is not harassment but transparency. A safe plant has nothing to lose from showing its record.

What Telangana should do

First, finish the Saraka inquiry quickly and publish it: the cause of the leak, whether gas detection and alarms were installed and working, and why two men could be overcome before anyone raised an alarm.

Second, inspect every unit in the Sangareddy belt that stores or handles toxic and flammable solvents, with a focus on the basics that save lives: gas detectors, ventilation, emergency drills and the number of trained safety staff on night shifts. The results should be posted online, unit by unit.

Third, the Sigachi committee’s findings, and what has been done about them, should be made public. Workers in the next plant down the road have a right to know what lessons were drawn from the death of more than 40 people.

Fourth, compensation should not be a substitute for accountability. Payment to families is the least a company owes; it should not close the question of whether its managers broke the law.

Finally, the state should ensure that a leak at night is treated the same as one by day. Saraka’s leak began close to midnight, and a thin night shift is where an unnoticed leak becomes a death.

Sudarshan Rao and Balaji had both come from Andhra Pradesh to work in Telangana’s factories. Their families have been paid. The test of the state’s seriousness is whether the next shift at the next plant is any safer.