Visakhapatnam: With shattered lives, agony plays fresh in their minds

Visakhapatnam: It was a close shave for general railway police constable S Santosh Kumar who got up at 3:25 am to attend to his duty on Thursday. But as soon as he came out of his residence at RR Venkatapuram, he could smell something wrong.

When he was trying to cross LG Polymers, the constable fell off from his bike, vomiting all of a sudden. "For a minute, I thought I lost my life. My skin started burning and blisters started surfacing. A few minutes later, I had no idea what happened to me," recalls Santosh Kumar. After 35 minutes when he regained his consciousness, he could barely open his eyes or move his body even an inch.

"The first thing I managed to do was to contact my wife and asked her to leave the house along with my mother, mother-in-law and other family members with immediate effect. I somehow managed to head towards NAD riding my two-wheeler. It was a horrible sight to see many lying unconscious on the roads. Meanwhile, my vision started blurring gradually and felt nauseated when I reached NAD," narrates the police constable. Later, the cops assisted him to get admitted to the King George Hospital (KGH). Hundreds residing at RR Venkatapuram, SC/BC Colony, Kamparampalem, Nandamuri Nagar and Padmanabanagar had a similar experience from 3:30 am on Thursday as they were affected due to the gas leak at LG Polymers. Continued on Page 5