KASUR: Three youths were asphyxiated while one fell unconscious in a well filled with poisonous gases here on Thursday at Chhant village in Ganda Singh police precincts.

Village Chhant is located near the Indian border and is one of the flood-hit areas in Kasur near the Sutlej.

According to Rescue 1122, Muhammad Amin went down into a 40-feet deep well to repair electric pump.

According to villagers, the well was covered with a concrete slab that created gases.

Police said when Amin did not turn up for a considerable period of time, other villagers Farman Ali, Muhammad Asif and Khalid Hussain went down. Panic spread when they too did not come out of the well.

Villagers informed the Rescue 1122 who recovered bodies of Amin, Farman and Asif while Hussain was critical. Hussain was shifted to DHQ Hospital from where he was referred to Lahore General Hospital.

Police shifted the bodies to the DHQ Hospital for autopsy in order to ascertain the cause of death. In another incident, Khudian police recovered an unidentified body of a man from the floodwater near Ather Singh village on Thursday.

On the identification of villagers, Khudian police recovered an unidentified body of a man in his 40s from the floodwater and shifted it to the city morgue.

According to police, the body seemed to be of an Indian man. Further investigation is under way.

Published in Dawn, August 23rd, 2019