Six persons died and two others were injured when they fell into a tank at a ketchup manufacturing unit in Lucknow's Talkatora area on Wednesday evening. The injured have been admitted to the Trauma Center.

The victims worked at the Akansha Food Products unit in Mayapuram locality in Rajajipuram. The factory owner, Ritesh Arora, has been detained by the police.

The 20-feet deep tank was used for fermenting vegetables. According to the police, one of the workers, Usha, was trying to scoop up fermented liquids from the tank, when her ladder slipped and she fell into the tank.

"When the woman fell in, the other workers jumped in to help her," said Rajiv Krishna, Senior Superintendent of Police, Lucknow. The police suspect that once inside the tank, the workers fell unconscious due to the gases from the fermented liquids and drowned.

The victims were taken to the Trauma Center, where doctors declared six of them dead. The deceased were identified as Dasrat Sahu, Surya Prakash, Ashraf, Anshu Dixit and Usha.

The identity of the sixth could not be ascertained.

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