A 27-year-old Noida engineer met with a fatal accident after his car plunged into the water-filled basement of an under-construction building in Sector 150. Soon after realizing that he was stuck in the vehicle and unable to escape, he called his father for help. Although his father and rescue teams reportedly arrived in time, he could not be saved.
The deceased identified as Yuvraj Mehta was working as a software engineer in Gurugram. According to a Hindustan Times report, his car crashed through the boundary wall of a roadside drain in the early hours of Sunday while he was driving in fog on a Noida road. After falling into an open drain, he was reportedly trapped in the vehicle for nearly two hours as rescue efforts failed to save his life.
“My son himself called me when he was trapped. He said, ‘Dad, I’m stuck, the car fell into the canal,'” Yuvraj Mehta’s father Raj Kumar Mehta was quoted as saying by HT.
Reflecting on the accident, the victim’s father said rescue teams arrived in time, but without the swimmer. Claiming his son’s life could have been saved, he said: “The police did get there but they couldn’t do much because they didn’t have swimmers with them. If there was a swimmer someone would have been able to get to him because the water was very deep.”
According to the police, Yuvraj Mehta, who lived in a high-rise building in Sector 150 with his father, was driving the Grand Vitara on the fateful day. When turning, he lost control and his car ran into the boundary wall of a gutter and fell into a waterlogged cellar.
An eyewitness recalled the incident and said the victim remained trapped in the submerged vehicle for one to two hours. “For about an hour and forty-five minutes, he kept begging for help, saying, ‘Please save me, save me in any way possible,'” HT quoted an eyewitness as saying.
The police have sought the help of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), State Disaster Response Force and fire brigade teams to recover the body of the deceased.
Fire chief Pradeep Kumar Chaubey said, “The rescue operation took some time. We were at the spot till about 5 am.”
A friend of the victim blamed the delayed response of the rescue teams for the tragedy, saying: “The rescue teams didn’t arrive until 2.30am and couldn’t even enter the water until 3.20am.”
According to the preliminary investigation, low visibility and excessive speed were the main factors that led to the accident. Deputy Commissioner of Police Hemant Upadhyay said, “They have dug a big canal, about six to seven feet wide. Due to poor visibility and high speed, the driver seems to have lost control.”
Yuvraj Mehta’s father accused the authorities of negligence at the construction site. He filed a police complaint alleging that residents of Sector 150 had requested the Noida authority to install barricades and floodlights near the drain, but no action was taken.