Tragic Electrocution Deaths Highlight Negligence in Tamil Nadu's Public Safety Regulations

Srimathi Venkatachari On August 11, a humid Sunday night in Sembakkam, near Tambaram, S R Ashwin left home at night to buy bread. The 36-year-old never returned. An accidental brush with a fibre-optic cable, illegally leashed to an electric pole and in contact with a live overhead wire, carried a silent, invisible charge that killed him instantly. The police later confirmed that the cable belonged to a private internet service provider and was in contact with an overhead electric line. Ashwin, an engineering graduate employed in an automobile company, leaves behind his wife and seven-year-old daughter. This was not fate. It was the predictable consequence of institutionalised negligence. Barely a month earlier, in Kilambakkam, Meghanathan Prabhu, a 46-year-old auto driver, died the same way. The Central Electricity Authority (measures relating to safety and electric supply) Regulations, 2010, categorically forbid any non-electrical attachments to power poles. The municipal corporation and the Tamil Nadu electricity board (TNEB) are under a statutory duty to inspect and remove such hazards. Where these duties are breached, causing death, the offence under Section 106, Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 (causing death by negligence) is attracted. Persistent disregard of known hazards could elevate the charge to Section 105 BNSS (culpable homicide not amounting to murder). Civil law, through the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur, presumes fault when dangerous conditions exist in public space, shifting the burden to the defendant authority (Municipal Corporation of Delhi vs Subhagwanti, AIR 1966 SC 1750). Article 21 of the Constitution is not an aspirational slogan; it imposes a binding duty on the State to protect life in all public domains. In M C Mehta vs Union of India (1987), the Supreme Court evolved the principle of absolute liability for hazardous activities, dispensing with proof of negligence. Electricity distribution, by its nature, falls within this category. Justice V Lakshminarayanan, a judge of the Madras high court, recently ordered TNEB to pay Rs 10 lakh compensation to a woman whose husband and son died due to electrocution in Kodaikanal. The incident occurred in 2018 when the woman’s son was electrocuted after touching a live wire on a clothesline. Her husband died trying to save him. The judge cited TNEB’s negligence in restoring power after the Gaja cyclone, leading to the incident. The case was filed in 2022. The petitioner claimed TNEB restored power without checking the lines, which were damaged by the cyclone. The judge noted that TNEB has a scheme for paying solatium to electrocution victims and directed the payment of Rs 10 lakh, exceeding the standard Rs 5 lakh compensation. Each dangling wire is a wager on human life. A meaningful legal response requires more than condolence: Immediate prohibition of all non-electrical wiring on power poles, enforced with statutory penalties; monthly joint inspections by TNEB and municipal authorities, findings to be made public; mandatory interim compensation within 30 days of a fatality, without awaiting final adjudication; and criminal accountability for systemic neglect, treating repeated violations as culpable homicide under Section 105 BNSS. The Constitution’s promise of life under Article 21 rings hollow if a trip to the bakery becomes a gamble with death. The law’s silence, in the face of repeated electrocution fatalities, risks normalising what should be legally intolerable. (The writer is an advocate in Madras high court) Electrocution deaths in Tamil NaduAug 2025, Sembakkam, S R Ashwin; fibre-optic cable in contact with live wire; FIR under Sec 106 BNSS July 2025, Kilambakkam, Meghanathan Prabhu (46); fibre-optic cable contact; investigation ongoing Dec 2018, Kodaikanal, Ravi & Raja Pandi; Fallen live wire on clothesline; ₹10 lakh compensation ordered (2024)