The Knowledge Park police on Tuesday arrested Abhay Kumar, a builder and owner of real estate firm MZ Wiztown Planners Ltd of Sector 150, Noida, in connection with the death of a Noida techie. Yuvraj Mehta, a 27-year-old engineer, drowned in a Noida ditch late on Friday.
He suffered underwater suffocation and cardiac arrest, resulting in his death. A First Information Report (FIR) revealed that among the firms responsible was MZ Wiztown Planners Ltd as the incident took place on their property.
Additional Commissioner of Police (Gautam Budh Nagar) Rajeev Narayan had earlier confirmed to Hindustan Times that MZ Wiztown Planners Ltd and Lotus Greens Construction Pvt Ltd had been named in the FIR.
In a statement, Lotus Greens condemned the incident but denied any responsibility, saying the plot was transferred to another party with the approval of the Noida authority in 2019–20. Promoter MZ Wiztown Planners added that it received the land in an “excavated state” and had not received permission to start any project there.
The arrest came hours after the office’s Noida executive director M Lokesh was removed from his post.
The victim’s father, Raj Kumar Mehta, alleged negligence on the part of local authorities and demanded accountability from the government. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath earlier in the morning ordered an SIT probe into the accident.
Yuvraj was returning home from work when the accident happened. An eyewitness, a deliveryman, claimed that quick rescue efforts could have saved the technician. Residents protested, saying the accident-prone site lacked proper barricades and floodlights.
