Nov 12 is when India celebrated Diwali, its new year and festival of lights, but it proved to be a dark day for 41 construction workers trapped due to falling debris inside the 4.5-km Silkyara Bend-Barkot tunnel in the mountainous northern state of Uttarakhand
The tunnel, part of a $1.7 billion, 900-km highway project to connect four major Hindu pilgrimage routes, is in a region with a geology of fractured rocks prone to landslides and seismic activity. .