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New Delhi: A 27-year-old software engineer died in Greater Noida after his car skidded in dense fog and fell into a water-filled basement, even as a delivery agent made a risky attempt to save him, alleging that trained rescue personnel refused to enter the water.
The victim, Yuvraj Mehta, was returning home late at night when his Grand Vitara lost control due to poor visibility, smashed through the wall of a deep drain and plunged into the flooded basement near his housing society. Trapped in the darkness and cold, Yuvraj cried out for help for nearly two hours before he drowned.
Moninder, a delivery agent who was at the scene, said he heard Yuvraj pleading for help from inside the water. Recalling the night, he said the accident occurred around midnight. “For almost one hour and forty-five minutes, he kept shouting, ‘Brother, save me somehow,’” Moninder said.
According to Moninder, police, fire brigade and State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) personnel reached the spot but hesitated to enter the water, citing freezing conditions and the danger posed by iron rods and unfinished structures inside the basement. He claimed he arrived around 1.45 am, barely minutes after Yuvraj had gone under.
“I saw SDRF personnel sitting on a ladder. When I asked them to rescue him, they refused. I told them to step aside and said I would go in myself,” Moninder said.
He said he removed his clothes, tied a rope around his waist and jumped into the water, swimming nearly 50 metres inside the submerged basement. Moninder searched for more than half an hour but could not locate either the car or Yuvraj in the dark, debris-filled water.
“I stayed there till around 5.30 am. The car and the boy had still not been found. After that, I went home. I don’t know what happened later,” he said.
Yuvraj lived at Tata Eureka Park Society in Sector 150 and worked as a software engineer with Dunnhumby India in Gurugram’s Sector 54. After the crash, he managed to climb out of the car and called his father, Rajkumar Mehta, to inform him about the accident. His father immediately alerted the police by dialling 112 and rushed to the site.
Witnesses said Yuvraj was seen intermittently standing on top of the overturned car, using his phone torch and shouting for help as thick fog and darkness severely limited visibility.
Despite the presence of police, fire brigade, SDRF and later National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) teams, the rescue operation stretched for nearly four and a half hours. Officials reportedly stayed out of the water due to the cold and the risk from under-construction columns inside the basement. Around 1.45 am, Yuvraj and the car finally submerged completely.
An NDRF team from Ghaziabad later recovered Yuvraj’s body from nearly 30 feet deep water and rushed him to a hospital, where doctors declared him dead.
Yuvraj’s family and several eyewitnesses have alleged serious delays and lapses in the rescue effort, claiming that timely intervention could have saved his life.
