Yuvraj Mehta, a 27-year-old software engineer, drowned after his car plunged into a water-filled ditch in Noida. Eyewitnesses accused rescuers of inaction. A man’s car fell into a ditch being prepared as a basement for an under-construction building in Noida’s Sector 150 late on Saturday night, according to a Hindustan Times report.
Family members and eyewitnesses claimed that rescue efforts were slow even though several agencies were present at the scene. The victim, a software engineer working in Gurugram, was trapped in his submerged car after it broke through the roadside boundary wall around midnight, possibly due to fog causing low visibility. The body was recovered two days later.
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‘The water is too cold’
Moninder, an eyewitness and alleged delivery man who entered the canal to help the technician, criticized what he described as “negligence on behalf of the authorities”.
Speaking to News18, the delivery man’s agent said, “The police came here. They called the fire brigade, which arrived within 15-20 minutes. The SDRF teams arrived at the spot a little late. However, despite the necessary equipment and necessary safety materials, the man’s car floated on the surface for about two hours. He kept pleading for help, which fell on deaf ears, but no one gave him any advice, no one gave him any advice.”
“I noticed the firemen were fully equipped with fire jackets and a crane. The man was alive when the firemen were there. They could have saved him 100 percent. They were well equipped,” he said.
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He claimed that rescuers at the scene refused to go into the water because of the cold temperatures and possible dangers below the surface. “Police along with SDRF (UP State Disaster Response Force) were present at the spot. Firefighters were also there. But no one helped him. They said, ‘The water is too cold. We won’t go in. There are iron bars inside. We won’t go in,'” the HT report quoted Moninder as saying.
By the time he arrived, Moninder said Mehta may have already died. “The boy drowned about 10 minutes before I got there. I told them (paramedics) to get out and I said I would go in. They came out. I took off my clothes, tied a rope around my waist and went at least 50 meters into the water,” he said.
Moninder further reported that he searched the flooded basement for about 30 minutes but was unable to locate either the car or the victim.
“Even till 5:30 in the morning, the boy was not rescued and the vehicle was not recovered. After that, I returned home and I don’t know anything about what happened,” he added.
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“Dad, I’m stuck,” the victim called to his father
Raj Kumar Mehta, father of the victim, said his son may have called him shortly after the accident. “My son called me himself when he was trapped.
The father arrived at the scene but stated that he could not help as the water was too deep. “The police did get there, but they couldn’t do much because they didn’t have a swimmer with them. If there was a swimmer, someone could have reached him because the water was very deep,” he said, according to Reuters.
What did the police say?
Police informed that Mehta was staying in a high-rise in Sector 150 with his father and was driving a Grand Vitara when he lost control on a curve, the report said.
According to the police, the car crashed into the boundary wall of the drain and plunged into the waterlogged basement of the building under construction.
“The rescue operation took some time. We were at the spot till about 5 am,” Chief Fire Officer Pradeep Kumar Chaubey told the news portal.
“We made all efforts to rescue him, but due to the depth of water accumulated in the under-construction vacant plot, it was difficult to rescue him in the dark and thick fog. We feared that there could be more casualties if someone entered the water to rescue him. It could have been worse for us,” the report quoted Hemant Upadhyay, Deputy Commissioner of Police, Greater Noida as saying.