‘Water too cold, they said’: Eyewitness criticises rescue efforts after Noida techie dies in ditch

Yuvraj Mehta, a 27-year-old software engineer, drowned after his car plunged into a water-filled ditch in Noida. Eyewitnesses accused rescue workers of inaction. The man's car fell into a ditch that was being prepared as a basement for an under-construction building in Noida’s Sector 150 late Saturday night, according to a Hindustan Times report.

Family members and eyewitnesses claimed that rescue efforts were slow, despite several agencies being present on the spot. The victim, a software engineer working in Gurugram, was trapped inside his submerged car after it broke through a roadside drain's boundary wall around midnight, likely due to fog causing low visibility. The body was recovered two days later.

Talking to News18, the delivery agent said, “The police came here. They called the fire department, which got here within 15-20 minutes. The SDRF teams reached the site a bit late. However, despite having the required equipment and necessary safety materials, the man’s car was floating on top of the water for about two hours. He kept pleading for help, which fell on deaf ears. There were over 100 men around, but no one stepped up to help him."

“I noticed that the fire department was fully equipped with fire safety jackets and a crane. The man was alive when the fire department was here. They could have saved him 100% They were well-equipped", he said.

He claimed that emergency responders at the scene refused to go into the water due to cold temperatures and possible hazards below the 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',” the HT report quoted Moninder.

By the time he arrived, Moninder said that Mehta might have 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," he said.

Moninder further informed that he searched the flooded basement for about 30 minutes but was unable to locate 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.

The father arrived at the location but mentioned he couldn't help because the water was too 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 was quoted as saying.

According to police, the car crashed into the boundary wall of a drain and plunged into the waterlogged basement of an under-construction site building.

“The rescue operation took some time. We were at the spot till around 5am,” Chief Fire Officer Pradeep Kumar Chaubey told the news portal.

“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,” the report quoted Hemant Upadhyay, Assistant Commissioner of Police, Greater Noida.