Rourkela: Rescue operations resumed near the site, where five persons were trapped inside an effluent discharging pipe of Rourkela Steel Plant (RSP) on the plant premises, on Sunday afternoon after a brief pause of a few hours. So far, only one body has been recovered.

The rescue operations resumed after the steel plant involved bigger equipment to remove the waste deposited in the pipe over the years. The depth of the deposited effluent would be no less than thirty feet and the heap looks like a small hill range.

"We had held a brief discussion with the administration, including the superintendent of police. There, it was decided that our heavy machineries would be put into service to remove the waste, only after which the bodies could be recovered," said RSP's executive director (personnel and administration) P.K. Pradhan.

Finding out the risks involved in the rescue operations, Rourkela police superintendent Uma Shankar Dash had ordered for a halt in the activities on Sunday morning. "The manner in which we retrieved one body could not be employed to recover other bodies, as we found it to be too dangerous for the rescuers. So, we decided to change our strategy," said Pradhan.

"As this site was located on the steel plant premises, we first held a discussion with the RSP officials. There we decided that the RSP would first remove the heap of mound and expose the pipe as they know the map underneath. Only then, rescue operations can go on," he added.

On Sunday, a big theft racket came to the fore when the wife of a missing person, Krishna Badnaik, a resident of Shitalpara, filed a missing complaint with Uditnagar police station. All the missing persons - Krishna Badnaik, Gonu Lohar, Suraj Singh, Suraj Kurmi and Raju Nayak - were from the same locality. They had entered the tunnel on June 3 in the hope of retrieving scrap items coming out of the plant. Though such activities are illegal, they are a major source of income for the slum-dwellers.