India, July 26 -- Sikkim tunnel blast kills 25 workers, raising fresh questions over safety protocols

The last rescue vehicle has left the Teesta valley. The floodlights that burned through four nights of darkness inside the Teesta Stage-VI Hydropower Project tunnel have been switched off. The machinery has gone silent.

But for the families of 25 workers who never returned from the underground passage beneath the Himalayas, the tragedy is only beginning.

After a desperate four-day rescue operation, emergency teams recovered the bodies of all workers trapped nearly 1.5 kilometres inside the headrace tunnel following a powerful underground explosion. The victims, many of them migrant labourers from West Bengal, Jharkhand, Bihar, and Assa...