A tunnel deep in the Himalayas.
25 workers.
One pocket of gas that had been sitting there for centuries.
Waiting.
Two days ago, excavation crews at NHPC's Teesta Stage-VI hydropower project in Sikkim struck it.
A methane burst tore through the tunnel.
Dense smoke. Toxic fumes. No warning.
The death toll has climbed fast.
15 confirmed on day one.
20 confirmed as rescue teams keep pulling out bodies.
Some are still trapped.
Here's the uncomfortable part.
Methane pockets in the Teesta basin aren't some freak anomaly.
Engineers know this.
Which raises the real question nobody wants to ask yet:
Was this risk even modelled before digging began?
Were gas detectors and ventilation systems actually working — or just present on paper?
Rewind to October 2023.
A glacial lake outburst flood wiped out the Teesta-III dam downstream.
More than 100 people died.
Rewind further — Uttarakhand, 2023. A tunnel collapse trapped 41 workers for 17 days.
Meghalaya, February this year. An illegal coal mine explosion killed roughly 30.
Different disasters. Same fragile terrain. Same pattern.
Teesta-VI wasn't even NHPC's project originally.
Private developers built it — then went bankrupt as costs spiralled.
NHPC absorbed it.
Now it's the one facing the fallout, and the one ordering the investigation into itself.
Rescue is still the priority right now.
Every hour matters for the workers still trapped underground.
But once the emergency ends, the harder question stays:
Were the environmental and safety clearances for this project ever actually enforced — or just signed and filed away.
Because in the Himalayas, the mountain doesn't forgive shortcuts.
That's all for now!
