Labourers who lost their sight after the accident. Picture by Naeem Ansari

May 16: Thirty-one day labourers survived a road accident yesterday but they aren’t lucky. The toxic water of the ditch where their mini-truck fell threatens them all with blindness.

Twelve are on the verge of losing their eyesight permanently and 19 others face at least temporary blindness, doctors said. Many have suffered severe burns as well.

A tanker had fallen into the ditch two weeks ago and spilled an unknown chemical into its waters, villagers said at the accident spot in Rampur district near the Uttar Pradesh-Uttarakhand border, 350km northwest of Lucknow.

Among the unluckiest is Pai Singh, 20. He had only suffered a few scratches after the truck skidded off a narrow stretch of road while trying to overtake a schoolbus around 7am. Nor did he fall into the water.

But shaken by the accident, he splashed water from the ditch on his face and immediately began to scream, eyewitnesses said. Doctors fear he may lose his eyesight permanently.

The labourers were all from Rustamnagar village in Uttarakhand, and were headed for Rampur to work on a paddy field. Many would now be permanently disabled, feared relatives visiting the injured at the two Uttarakhand hospitals they are admitted to.

“As soon as the truck fell into the ditch, the passengers began screaming that their arms, legs and eyes were burning, and that they couldn’t see anything,” a villager said.

Moradabad divisional commissioner Umadhar Diwedi said a water sample from the ditch had been sent to a laboratory in Bareilly to ascertain the nature of the chemical.

“The tanker fell into the ditch, dug by the state public works department (PWD), on May 1. In the 15 days since then, the Rampur administration neither got the water tested nor issued a warning to villagers,” said S.S. Dhillon, a Samajwadi Party leader in Bajpur, where the accident happened. “The administration should have filled in the ditch with soil,” he added.

Rampur district magistrate Nitishwar Kumar said it’s the PWD who should have filled in the pond. “We are looking into the charges against the PWD unit,” he said.