‘Water is too cold, there are iron rods’: Witnesses allege inaction by cops after Noida techie’s death in drain

A27-year-old adult male drowned after his gondola plunged into a water-filled ditch face of the earth readied as cellar of an under-construction edifice in Noida’s Sector 150 late Saturday night, with family members and eyewitnesses alleging that rescue efforts were delayed despite multiple agencies being present at the spot.The victim, Yuvraj Mehta, a software engineer working in Gurugram, was trapped inside his submerged car as it broke through the boundary wall of a roadside drain around midnight, reportedly due to low visibility in fog. His body was eventually recovered on Monday morning.Eyewitnesses described his chilling plea for help before falling silent. Family members have also raised serious questions about the pace and conduct of the rescue operation, which lasted for hours.‘They said the water is too cold’Moninder, an eyewitness who reportedly works as a delivery agent and who entered the drain in an attempt to help the techie, described what he called “negligence on the authorities’ behalf".Moninder said the accident occurred in heavy fog around midnight and that he reached the spot at about 1.45 am. He added that Mehta remained trapped in the car. “For around one hour and forty-five minutes, he kept pleading for help, saying, ‘please save me, save me in any way possible',” Moninder told reporters. He alleged that emergency responders on site refused to enter the water, citing cold temperature and potential hazards below the water surface. “The police were present at the spot, along with the SDRF (UP's State Disaster Response Force). Fire brigade personnel were also there. But no one helped him. They were saying, ‘The water is too cold. We won’t go inside. There are iron rods inside. We won’t go',” he said.While talking to an HT reporter, Police said sending someone untrained into the water could have caused another death.Also Read | Techie, 27, drowns in Greater Noida after his car crashes into waterlogged construction site‘I took off my clothes, went inside’By the time he reached, Moninder claimed, Mehta had possibly already died. “The boy had drowned about 10 minutes before I reached. I told them (rescuers) to come out and said I would go inside. They came out. I took off my clothes, tied a rope around my waist, and went at least 50 metres inside the water.”Moninder said he searched the flooded basement for nearly 30 minutes, but could not find either the car or the victim.“Even by 5:30 in the morning, neither the boy had been recovered nor the vehicle brought out. After that, I went back home, and I don’t know anything further about what happened,” he added.Father recalls horrorMehta’s father, Raj Kumar Mehta, said his son managed to call him shortly after the accident. “My son himself called me while he was trapped. He said, ‘papa, I am stuck, the car has fallen into the drain’,” he told Hindustan Times.The father reached the site but said he could not help as the water was deep. “The police did reach there, but they were unable to do much because they did not have a swimmer with them. If there had been a swimmer, someone could have reached him, as the water was very deep,” he said.Also Read | ‘Papa, I am stuck’: What Noida techie told father before drowning in ditch after car crashPolice version of eventsPolice said Mehta lived in a high-rise in Sector 150 with his father and was driving a Grand Vitara when he lost control while taking a turn.The car rammed into the boundary wall of a drain and fell into the waterlogged basement of the under-construction building, they said.Teams from the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), the State Disaster Response Force (SDRF), and the fire department were called in around midnight. After hours of searching, the body was recovered.“The rescue operation took some time. We were at the spot till around 5am,” said chief fire officer Pradeep Kumar Chaubey.However, Mehta’s friends disputed this timeline. “The rescue teams arrived only by 2.30am and could not even enter the water till 3.20am,” said Pankaj, a friend of the deceased.“We made all efforts to rescue him, but due to the depth of the water collected in the under-construction vacant plot, it was difficult to save him in the darkness and dense fog. We were afraid that there could be more casualties if someone entered the water to rescue him. It could have been worse for us,” said Hemant Upadhyay, Assistant Commissioner of Police, Greater NoidaAK Arora, general manager (civil) of the Noida authority, did not respond to repeated requests for comment.(With inputs from Arun Singh, Asmita Seth)