India, April 3 -- Eight people died in Madhya Pradesh's Khandwa district on Thursday when they went inside a well to clean it for immersion of idols, police said.

Khandwa superintendent of police (SP) Manoj Rai said the eight bodies had been taken from the well in the rescue operation that lasted five hours.

Rai said the prima facie, the eight could have died due to a toxic gas since the deceased knew how to swim but all of them fell unconscious within minutes of entering the well,

"Four people entered the well in the Khandwa's Kondavat village to clean it for immersion of idols of Gangaur festival. They started drowning in the well. Later four more people entered the well one by one but they all drowned," the SP said.

As soon as the ...