Pharmaceutical factory blast in India leaves 36 dead, more missing

Rescue teams search rubble for survivors after a deadly India factory explosion. Photo / the Washington Post

At least 36 people were killed and dozens more injured in an explosion at a pharmaceutical factory in the southern Indian state of Telangana, state authorities said.

The death toll is expected to rise as rescue workers continue to search the site following the blast. Dozens of people remain missing.

The blast occurred around 9am local time on Monday at a plant in Pashamylaram, some 50km west of Hyderabad, the state capital.

According to reports by local outlets, the explosion flattened a four-storey building and threw workers dozens of metres.

More than 140 people were on-site when the explosion occurred, officials told reporters.

The bodies were “badly burnt and mutilated”, Telangana Health Minister Damodar Raja Narasimha told the Associated Press, and DNA tests were necessary to identify remains. The cause of the explosion is under investigation.

Photos from the scene show rubble heaped storeys high.

The Telangana state Government and Sigachi Industries, the operator of the factory, are set to pay 10 million rupees, around US$117,000 ($191,810), to family members of each of the deceased, Telangana Chief Minister Revanth Reddy said in televised remarks. Injured workers are also set to receive compensation.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed his condolences on X and pledged an additional 200,000 rupees, around US$2300, to the families of the deceased.

The Pashamylaram plant is one of Sigachi’s three manufacturing units, according to company documentation.

India is the third-largest pharmaceutical industry in the world by volume and the leading supplier of generic medicines and vaccines.

Labour and human rights watchdogs have warned of inadequate safety measures and lax oversight in some Indian factories.

In a 2020 report on human rights in India, the United States State Department found that health and safety inspection capacity was insufficient and enforcement often poor.

Global union federation InustriALL said that some 235 workers died across 116 industrial accidents in India between May 2020 and June 2021, according to media accounts and reports by the group’s affiliates.

The Pashamylaram blast came after a series of industrial accidents in the country.

An August explosion at a chemical plant in Atchutapuram, in the neighbouring state of Andhra Pradesh, left 17 workers dead.

In May 2024, two unrelated explosions at chemical factories in Mumbai and the eastern state of Chhattisgarh killed at least 11, according to news items published by Britain’s Royal Society of Chemistry.

The 1984 Bhopal disaster, the world’s worst industrial accident, occurred when a leak at a pesticide plant exposed hundreds of thousands of people in the central Indian city of Bhopal to a highly toxic gas and left a death toll in the thousands.