CUTTACK: A 58-year-old woman died after falling into a septic tank and crushed under a pile of stone chips while plucking flowers at Chuna Bhati Gali in Jobra here on Friday morning.
The deceased Jayashree Rout had reportedly climbed up the stone chips heap to pluck flowers in the backyard of her house when she slipped and fell on the damaged concrete slab cover of the septic tank.
Unable to bear her weight, the stone slab caved in and the woman fell into the tank. The stone chips also slid and buried her in the tank. The incident went unnoticed for about an hour. Later on searching, her family members traced her body inside the tank after noticing her hand under the stones. They claimed that the septic tank was unused and in a dilapidated condition.
On being informed, fire services personnel from Chauliaganj fire station reached the spot and recovered the body. She was then taken to the SCB medical college and hospital where she was declared received dead. Fire officer Bikash Kumar Sahoo said they got information of the incident at 6.30 am.
“Though the family members claimed that they weren’t using the septic tank, we found water and faeces in it. Since the woman was buried under a huge pile of stone chips, we had to manually remove them using a spade. It took us around 45 minutes to recover her body from the tank,” he added.
Jayashree was the wife of Manoranjan Rout, a retired government employee. While her body was handed to the family after postmortem, an unnatural death case was registered at the Malgodown police station.