Indian authorities have questioned engineers from China’s Shandong Electric Power Construction Corp (Sepco) after an accident last week that killed 41 workers at a power plant being built for an Indian subsidiary of Vedanta, the UK-listed mining company.

About 100 labourers and engineers were working on a 330-foot power plant chimney – part of an expansion at the massive Korba complex of Bharat Aluminium Company (Balco) – when the tower collapsed last Wednesday afternoon, burying workers in the rubble.