Rescue workers on Sunday recovered the body of one of the eight men who have been trapped in an under-construction tunnel in Telangana, 16 days after its roof partially collapsed, The News Minute reported.

A section of the Srisailam Left Bank Canal tunnel in Nagarkurnool district collapsed on February 22. Besides trapping the eight men, about a dozen others were injured.

The workers are believed to be trapped in the last 50 metres in front of the tunnel boring machine that was being used. This spot is about 14 km inside the tunnel.

The person whose body was recovered has been identified as Gurpreet Singh from Punjab’s Tarn Taran and worked as a tunnel boring machine operator, The Indian Express reported.

Trained cadaver dogs, brought in by the Kerala Police three days ago, identified the presence of a human about 100 metres from the accident site in the final stretch of the tunnel, allowing rescuers to recover Singh’s body on Sunday.

Rescue operations to locate the remaining seven workers continued on Monday.

Nagarkurnool Superintendent of Police Vaibhav Gaikwad told The Indian Express that digging in the last 50 metres towards the rock end had not started “due to the risk involved”.

Telangana Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy announced compensation of Rs 25 lakh for Singh’s family.

More than 300 personnel of the National Disaster Response Force, State Disaster Response Force and the Army had been deployed at the site. However, heavy flow of water and slush inside the tunnel have created hurdles for the rescue teams.

Those who remain trapped in the collapsed tunnel have been identified as Manoj Kumar and Sri Niwas from Uttar Pradesh, Sunny Singh from Jammu and Kashmir, and Sandeep Sahu, Jegta Xess, Santosh Sahu and Anuj Sahu from Jharkhand.

Two of them are engineers, one is an operator and four are labourers.