More than 40 hours after a towering garbage heap at Pune’s Moshi waste-to-energy plant buried the administrative building of the company operating the facility, rescue teams are still searching for eight employees believed to be trapped beneath the debris.

The collapse, which occurred around 1.30 pm on July 8, has transformed a facility inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2023 and under the jurisdiction of the Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation into the centre of a massive multi-agency rescue operation – involving the National Disaster Response Force, the Indian Army, firefighters and the police.

According to municipal officials, about 23 people were inside the building when the garbage heap gave way. Of these, five workers identified as Ashok Gupta, Munendra Kumar, Chandrashekhar Singh, Dinesh Sutar and Shri Bala managed to escape. 

NDRF Deputy Commandant Deepak Tiwari said, “We began the rescue operation at around 3.30 pm on July 8 and, by the early hours of July 9, our teams had rescued nine people alive. During the continued search operation, we later located one more person, but unfortunately he could not be saved. The operation is still underway. A significant amount of time has passed, which makes rescue efforts increasingly challenging, especially because the victims are trapped under waste........

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