Alert for fleeing Chinese nationals, no one held: Officials

NEW DELHI/RAIPUR - Indian airport authorities are on the lookout for Chinese nationals who have fled from a Bharat Aluminium Company Ltd (Balco) plant in Chhattisgarh, after an under-construction chimney collapsed killing 45 people, but no one has been detained till now, officials said Sunday.

“About 70 Chinese nationals, mostly engineers, have left Korba town amid rising death toll of workers,” a police source told IANS in Raipur.

The Chinese nationals were employed in Korba town, 250 km north of state capital Raipur, by Shandong Electric Power Construction Corporation (SEPCO) - a China-based company that was given the contract to construct a 1,200-MW thermal power plant.

SEPCO, in turn, had given a contract to Gannon Dunkerley and Company Ltd (GDCL) for construction of a 275-metre high chimney for the plant that caved in. So far, 45 bodies have been retrieved from the debris of the chimney scattered over a large area.

Several workers are still feared to be trapped in the rubble.

“Even the SEPCO office is locked. We need to stop them from fleeing Chhattisgarh, or even from India, as they need to be interrogated about the tragedy for a judicial probe,” the police official said.

Meanwhile highly placed sources in the national capital told IANS that no Chinese national has been detained following the lookout notice against them.

In the past two days, no such detention has been made, the source said.