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Three truck drivers in Odisha die in mysterious circumstances
The truck drivers ate cooked fish and green bananas for dinner before they complained of nausea and uneasy stomach.
Three truck drivers from Jharkhand who had come to Odisha’s Dhenkanal district to pick up ethanol spirit from a sugar mill just before the lockdown was announced in March, died under mysterious circumstances on Friday morning.
Dhenkanal police said one of the three brothers, Hariram Bharati, Rudaal Bharati and Dilip Bharati was found dead on Friday morning near the trucks, while the other two died on the way to hospitals.
“The three had a meal of fish and green banana which they had cooked under the trucks. After eating, one of them complained of uneasiness and nausea. He died while being taken to the Dhenkanal district headquarters hospital. Another driver, too, died on the way to SCB Medical College and Hospital in Cuttack. The third was found dead near the truck where he had his meal,” said Gyanaranjan Samal, inspector of Dhenkanal town police station.
The inspector ruled out excessive consumption of hooch or other liquor and said he suspected food poisoning to be the cause of death, since all three had complained of uneasy stomachs after eating.
“There was no smell of alcohol on their mouths. Another driver who cooked his meal a little distance away was fine. We suspect there was something wrong with the food consumed by these men. The post-mortem will make the cause of death clear,” he said.
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The three brothers were unable to pick up the ethanol which was meant for a brewery in Khurda district, and were stranded in Dhenkanal, waiting for the lockdown to end and the local excise office to reopen.
On Thursday, the office had opened and they managed to complete the necessary paperwork for picking up the ethanol in the coming week.
