Coimbatore: Two workers were asphyxiated to death while cleaning a septic tank in a housing unit here Tuesday, police said.

Four workers were engaged to clean the tank by a residents welfare association, the police said. As two of the workers, both brothers, got into the tank, one of them – Murugan developed breathlessness and fainted.

Seeing this, his brother Pandidurai got into the tank and tried vainly to pull Murugan out but the latter died by then, the police said. Soon, Pandidurai too lost consciousness and died inhaling the poisonous gas, they said.

On information, police arrived at the scene, recovered the bodies and sent them for a postmortem. Some of the residents complained to the police that the sanitary workers had entered the septic tank without equipping themselves with safety gear.