Kolkata: Five men instinctively clasped hands and formed a chain beneath a massive concrete slab moments after an under-construction warehouse in Taratala came crashing down around them. The desperate human chain created just enough space to stop the slab from crushing them instantly, giving them a fragile pocket of survival beneath tonnes of concrete and steel.Five hours later, Army and NDRF rescuers pulled them out. Only three were alive. The other two workers, who spent their final hours holding hands with their colleagues and waiting for help, succumbed to their injuries.Among the survivors was Md Arman Khan, a resident of Kakinara in Jagaddal, who escaped with a fractured arm and stitches on his skull. Speaking to The Times of India in the SSKM Hospital, Khan recalled how the five workers were at work in the first floor when the roof suddenly gave way and crashed down on them.“We couldn’t move. The slab stopped just above us. We held on to each other and kept talking so that nobody would lose hope,” Khan said.Above them, one question kept echoing through the mangled remains of the warehouse: “Koi andar hain?” (“Is there anyone inside?”)From beneath the rubble, Khan was the one to reply that would guide rescuers to them. “Hum yahan hain… . Paanch log hain,” he said. (“We are here… Please save us… Five of us are here.”)Those faint cries, muffled by layers of collapsed concrete and twisted steel, led Army and NDRF personnel during one of Kolkata’s biggest rescue operations in recent years. For nearly five hours, rescue teams painstakingly cut through unstable debris, inch by inch, until they reached the trapped workers.Khan said the joy of being rescued was short-lived. Two of the men with whom he shared those terrifying hours beneath the rubble could never make it to the hospital bed.“They were beside me the whole time. We kept telling each other that help would come,” he said quietly. “I survived. They didn’t.”
