Nearly 700 laboratory animals housed at the Industrial and Toxicological Research Centre's (itrc) Gheru Campus in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, have died overnight of extreme heat. The air-conditioning at the organisation's animal house went on the blink after a major power failure and due to the non-functional generators of the institute. Incidentally, the animal house was supposed to have been built in conformity with good laboratory guidelines.

This Rs 4-crore facility meets the need of the majority of the itrc projects in the field of preventive toxicology, predictive toxicology, analytical toxicology and inhalation toxicology. As these animals were not being used for experiments, no scientific data has been lost. Meanwhile, an enquiry has been initiated into the matter.