‘Papa, I am stuck’: What Noida techie told father before drowning in ditch after car crash

A27-year-old computer software locomotive engineer drowned, reportedly after his gondola skint through and through the boundary wall of a roadside drain and fell into a water-filled basement at an under-construction building in Greater Noida’s Sector 150.Around midnight, the police called in teams from the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), the State Disaster Response Force and the fire service. After hours of search efforts, the teams found and recovered the body of the victim, identified as Yuvraj Mehta, as mentioned in an earlier HT report.Son was trapped, claims fatherMehta lived in a high-rise building in Sector 150 with his father and worked as a software engineer in Gurugram, police said.The techie had called his father shortly after the accident, which happened around midnight. However, his father said he was unable to get help in time even after reaching the site.Speaking to HT, Raj Kumar Mehta, the father of the victim, said, “My son himself called me while he was trapped. He said, ‘papa, I am stuck, the car has fallen into the drain.’”He said that while the police arrived, they could not reach his son because there was no swimmer available. “If there had been a swimmer, someone could have reached him, as the water was very deep,” he said.Friends of the victim said the rescue teams did not respond quickly. Pankaj, a friend, said, “The rescue teams arrived only by 2.30 am and could not even enter the water till 3.20 am.”An eyewitness, Moninder, told reporters that the victim remained trapped inside the submerged car for one to two hours. “For around one hour and forty-five minutes, he kept pleading for help, saying, ‘please save me, save me in any way possible,’” he said.How did the techie die?According to the police, Mehta was driving a Grand Vitara when he lost control while taking a turn. The vehicle hit the boundary wall of the drain and fell into the flooded basement, they said.“The rescue operation took some time. We were at the spot till around 5 am,” said chief fire officer Pradeep Kumar Chaubey.A preliminary investigation points to poor visibility and high speed as possible reasons for the crash, police said.“They had dug a large drain, around six to seven feet wide. Due to poor visibility and high speed, the driver appears to have lost control,” assistant commissioner of police Hemant Upadhyay said.In his police complaint, which was accessed by Hindustan Times, Mehta’s father claimed that residents of Sector 150 had asked the Noida authority to put up barricades and reflectors near the drain, but no steps were taken.Upadhyay said that while the boundary wall was damaged in some places, it was still not clear how the car fell into the basement and became fully submerged.(With inputs from HT correspondent)