Uttarkashi: Amid cheers and fireworks Tuesday evening, 41 workers, who had been trapped within the under-construction Silkyara-Barkot tunnel in Uttarkashi, Uttarakhand, for 17 days, walked out.
Their relatives, camping in the area for days, greeted them with tears of joy. Many of them have plans to now celebrate a belated Diwali.
The challenging rescue mission — involving a total of 13 agencies from both central and state governments — was marked by several obstacles due to the delicate terrain.
These included the Oil & Natural Gas Corporation, power companies SJVN and THDC, Rail Vikas Nigam Limited, and National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited, the entity implementing the tunnelling project. Foreign experts were also engaged.
The last leg of the rescue mission was successfully completed by rat-hole miners who burrowed through 12-15 metres of rubble and laid an evacuation pipe for the trapped workers.
ThePrint’s senior photojournalist Suraj Singh Bisht — in Uttarakhand since the early days of the rescue operation — captured how it unfolded in stages over the past 17 days.
As the ambulances on standby carried the workers to community health centres, people gathered outside chanted slogans such as ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’, ‘Modi hai toh mumkin hai’, and ‘Dhami-Modi gambhir hai’, while locals distributed sweets and sang songs praising their deity — Baba Baukh Nag.
Some of the workers, seated in the ambulances, wore smiles on their faces while others showed signs of fatigue. They waved at the media and the crowd.
The grueling operation, watched by the entire nation as it encountered and overcame several snags, had come to a close.
Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami and other officials at the site | Suraj Singh Bisht | ThePrintA makeshift temple on the site was built early on during the rescue operations, where fervent prayers were offered for the workers’ safe return. Locals had even performed a havan there Monday.
The trapped workers were provided with food — simple meals of rice, roti and lentils — following a request for warm meals after days of eating dry fruits and puffed rice.
The Silkyara tunnel is part of the Narendra Modi government’s flagship Char Dham All Weather Road Project aimed at connecting Uttarakhand’s major pilgrimage points.
