A grueling month-long rescue operation in Telangana’s Srisailam Left Bank Canal (SLBC) tunnel took a somber turn Tuesday as teams discovered traces of human remains near the loco train track, close to the collapse site in Nagarkurnool district.

The breakthrough came early this morning when workers, digging through the final 50 meters of the 14-kilometer tunnel, detected a foul odor and unearthed a second body—stuck in debris—raising the death toll from the February 22 disaster to two confirmed fatalities.

The tunnel’s roof caved in just four days after construction resumed, trapping eight workers. The body of Gurpreet Singh, a Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM) operator from Punjab, was recovered on March 9. Now, with the second find, rescue teams—including the NDRF, SDRF, Singareni Collieries, and Kerala’s cadaver dog squad—are racing to retrieve the remains by evening, focusing on a spot outside the D1 and D2 zones where the missing were believed buried.

Six workers—Manoj Kumar and Sri Niwas (Uttar Pradesh), Sunny Singh (Jammu & Kashmir), and Sandeep Sahu, Jegta Xess, and Anuj Sahu (Jharkhand)—remain unaccounted for.

Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy, who has overseen the multi-agency effort involving 700 personnel, ordered intensified operations Monday.

Robots, deployed since March 11, navigate the hazardous TBM area, while conveyor belts clear 620 cubic meters of muck hourly. Yet, water, silt, and a “prohibited zone” flagged by the Geological Survey of India as collapse-prone have slowed progress.

As families await closure and questions swirl over safety lapses, the tragedy underscores the perilous cost of ambition in Telangana’s longest irrigation project.