500 Indian workers dead in Qatar in last two years

More than 500 Indian migrant workers have died in Qatar since January 2012, revealing for the first time the shocking scale of fatalities among those building the infrastructure for the 2022 World Cup.

Official figures confirmed by the Indian embassy in Doha reveal that 237 Indians working in Qatar died in 2012 and 241 last year. A further 24 Indians died last month.

These come after The Guardian revealed last month that 185 Nepalese workers had died in Qatar in 2013, taking the total from that country to at least 382 over two years.

Rights groups and politicians said the figures meant soccer's world governing body Fifa could not "look the other way", and should be leading demands for Qatar to improve conditions for the estimated 1.2 million migrant workers fuelling the construction boom.

The figures from the Indian embassy also show that 233 Indian migrants died in 2010 and 239 in 2011, taking the total over four years to 974. Since the World Cup was awarded to Qatar in December 2010 there have been 717 recorded Indian deaths. The embassy did not provide further details on who those individuals were, their cause of death or where they worked.

But analysis of the lists of dead Nepalese workers showed that more than two-thirds died of sudden heart failure or workplace accidents.