It was around 11 PM on Saturday, October 31 when the night shift employees of Shri Ganga Hotel situated on the road connecting Ujjain and Dewas had started their exit from work that an incident occurred. Four individuals entered a waste chamber inside the hotel but never returned.
According to the police, four individuals lost their lives allegedly due to suffocation while cleaning the waste chamber in the privately owned hotel.
The story provided by officials was concise. Ujjain Superintendent of Police Pradeep Sharma reported that four people went inside to clean the chamber and died of suffocation while being trapped there.
The rescue mission was late. They pulled out the bodies, gave them cardiopulmonary resuscitation, which did not help and took them to the hospital where they were pronounced dead.
Their names and ages were not mentioned in the sources reviewed.
However, the incident did not just affect the four people. Two others who went into the chamber to rescue them got ill too.
While there is no consensus about their condition, either case indicated that they survived. While one report mentioned that they were discharged after being treated, PTI report indicated that they were under medical treatment in the hospital.
This scenario is a common trend where those who come to help become victim themselves due to the air that caused the death of the first group.
This gives an extra information about the function of the chamber. It was a place that was used to gather waste produced by the sweets and dairy products section of the hotel.
According to earlier information, the employees had inhaled gas. Four individuals reportedly succumbed to inhaling the poisonous gas, and initially it was reported that two individuals had gone into the chamber for cleaning and fainted. It is yet not known what kind of gas was inhaled.
There were some problems in rescuing the victims from the chamber.
Questions have just begun, according to officials. According to District Magistrate Roshan Kumar Singh, the administration will investigate whether the workers went into the room to clean the chamber or if they fell into the room by mistake.
However, the real question lies in the preparation. The police have started investigating if the safety procedures were followed, whether the level of gas was checked before the workers entered and whether they got the required safety equipment.
The part played by the hotel management is also being investigated.
The reaction of the government was swift. The Chief Minister Mohan Yadav extended condolences and promised financial support to the families of the deceased amounting to ₹4 lakh each.
Mohan Yadav is a person who has a connection to the city. Mohan Yadav is originally from Ujjain. On his account on X, he said that the news of death during the cleaning of the chamber was heartbreaking.
No matter what compensation there will be, the family wants to know the cause of the tragedy.
Accidents involving confined spaces have occurred in India in the past as well. Two housekeeping employees of a restaurant situated in west Delhi lost their lives in March 2019 when they entered into the kitchen waste plant to clean it.
According to fire department officers, none of them wore any safety equipment.
Four contract workers died due to suffocation as they were cleaning a water tank in a building located in Nagpada, Mumbai in March 2025. They were rescued from there by the fire brigade.
In the incident of Delhi, it is observed that the law against manual scavenging could not be applied to the workers as they were cleaning kitchen waste and not sewage.
The standard advice given by experts is generally limited to just a few factors: test the air prior to entry, ventilate the room, have breathing apparatus and harness available, and leave someone trained outside. It does not appear that anything on that list was relevant in the case of Ujjain.
The questions put forth by investigators on Sunday regarding gas testing and equipment are indicative of this list as well.
Four families had to wake up on Sunday to the worst news of their lives.
Two other individuals have also been rushed to the hospital while trying to rescue the victims.
The waste tank of a hotel is now the center of a police investigation.
Compensation has been promised and the investigation will determine if there is any party held responsible. But the real test is if the hotels and contractors recognize the danger and plan before conducting the cleaning operation.
An operation where the worker is required to enter an enclosed space requires a planned exit route for him.
