AURANGABAD: Two farmers who had entered a drainage chamber in the outskirts of the city on Monday afternoon died apparently from suffocation. The fire-brigade rescued four other farmers who had also gone into the chamber while one farmer is missing.Janardhan Sable (55), who entered the chamber first, had gone in to check an electric motor which had developed a snag. The farmers, all of them sharecroppers, had installed the motor in the chamber to draw drainage water for cultivating their crops. The wells in their village - Brijwadi Shivar in Chikalthana MIDC - are running dry due to the drought conditions, forcing them to take water from any source.When Sable neither emerged from the chamber nor responded to calls from his relatives outside, six other farmers - Ramkisan Mane (47), Umesh Kavde (40), Dinesh Darake (37), Navnath Kavde (40), Prakash Waghmare (55) and Rameshwar Dambe (27) - entered to find him. However, all of them experienced breathlessness apparently due to the gases in the chamber.Seeing this, the villagers standing outside called the fire brigade, who managed to bring out the unconscious farmers. However, Dambe could not be found even till Monday evening. Sable and Darake were taken to the Government Medical College and Hospital (GMCH) where they were declared brought dead. The others have been admitted to a private hospital.AMC fire brigade officer Mohan Mungse said they are trying to break the pipe to check if Dambe is stuck inside.Till the Aurangabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) constructed the drainage pipeline around two years ago, villagers would easily lift water from the open nullah. Now, several electric motors have been illegally installed in the 20-25 feet deep drainage chambers. The water extracted is used for growing crops like wheat and vegetables.Mane’s son, Shivshankar, told TOI that farmers stepping into the chamber to check the functioning of the motors is routine. The AMC had confiscated some electric motors of the villagers 15 days ago. “It is illegal to use drainage water for farming,” corporator Raju Shinde said.

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