Rescue workers on Sunday evening exhumed one body from the point identified by the cadaver dog squad. The body was identified as that of TBM operator Gurpreet Singh, 40, from Punjab. The search operation continued for the 17th day in the last 70 metres of the 14-km-long tunnel, where the eight workers were trapped after a portion of the tunnel roof collapsed on a Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM) on February 22. The rescue workers continued to face challenges due to the debris of the TBM and the large amount of muck. The authorities on Saturday deployed robots for rescue operations in the tunnel as suggested by Chief Minister Revanth Reddy during his visit to the tunnel on March 2. It is hoped that more bodies would be recovered soon based on the sniffer dog leads and the ground probing radar (GPR) scanning information provided by the National Geophysical Research Institute (NGRI) The rescue agencies were mobilising special equipment for the workers to carry out their work without the risk of being trapped in the slush.