The truck in which the six men spent the night The truck in which the six men spent the night

Six employees of a catering company died inside a mobile catering truck near Periyar Hostel in Delhi Cantonment on Tuesday. Police said that to get some respite from the cold, the six men had slept inside the truck with a tandoor, which was still warm from a function they had helped arrange. While four of them were found dead inside the van on Tuesday afternoon, two others died in the evening during treatment, police said.

DCP (southwest) Shibesh Singh said that a case of death due to negligence has been registered on the basis of a DD entry. “We are yet to ascertain the exact reason for the deaths and are awaiting the post-mortem reports to confirm the same,” he said.

Police, however, said it is likely that the men had suffocated to death since they tried to sleep next to the tandoor. “There was no other indicator for their deaths. Last night, they had slept inside the truck with the tandoor, which was used at a wedding function on Monday night,” said a senior police officer.

While the post-mortems are underway at DDU Hospital, police said they are yet to contact the families of the dead. According to police, the six men had worked at a wedding function on Mall Road till 2 am and left in their trailer truck after packing their utensils — among them the tandoor.

After leaving the function, police said, they parked their vehicle behind ground number 4 at Kendriya Vidyalaya. “They were initially supposed to go back home but later decided to sleep inside the truck since it was late and they had to work at a function nearby in the morning,” the officer said.

Police said they received a call from the supervisor of the catering company, Nirmal Singh, around 1.30 pm. After getting the call, a police team reached the DDU Hospital, where four of them were declared brought dead and shifted to a mortuary.

Two others, who were in critical condition when they were taken to the hospital, succumbed in the evening. While three of them — Amit, Pankaj, Anil — hail from Rudrapur in Uttarakhand, Kamal is a native of Nepal. Police are yet to trace where Awadh Lal and Deep Chand are from.

Police, however, said they lived in a rented accommodation in Chandra Vihar.

Police said the six men had been working at Gurpreet caterers for the last one-and-a-half months. “They used to come during the winter months to work as wedding staff. They would earn for three months and go back to their respective villages. They were working on a daily wage basis at the catering company,” the officer said.

After the incident was reported, a police team also questioned the supervisor who found the bodies. Police said they will also talk to witnesses from the previous wedding to ascertain the sequence of events. “There seems to be no foul play so far,” the officer said.

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