Crossing drain on wooden plank, man slips & drowns

Ghaziabad: A 27-year-old plumber drowned after falling in a 15-foot pit filled with rainwater near the railway crossing in Loni Border on Sunday.Police said on Monday that they had to call a JCB machine, and it took them more than five hours to retrieve the man’s body.The incident occurred when the plumber, Satendra Kumar, was trying to cross a drain on a wooden plank, which had been placed there as a makeshift bridge. Kumar lost his footing while walking on the plank and fell into the pit adjacent to the drain.“Preliminary investigation has revealed that Kumar had ventured out to meet his friends at 2pm, and the tragic incident occurred while he was returning home around 4.30pm. As he attempted to cross the drain using the wooden plywood, he lost his footing and fell into the pit,” Ankur Vihar ACP Bhaskar Verma said on Friday.A neighbour who knew Satendra, Sushil Kumar, told TOI that locals saw Kumar fall into the pit, and tried to rescue him but they couldn’t see anything. They informed cops and Kumar’s body was found by 10pm. Residents of Loni Border area said the drain hadn’t been desilted before monsoon and it would get filled with water after every spell of rain. “Loni Border area is one of the city’s low-lying regions, and during monsoon, water enters houses also. It becomes a daunting task to navigate roads and residents struggle to differentiate between the road and the drain due to severe waterlogging,” Anuj Kumar, a resident, said.Asked about Kumar’s death, chairperson of Loni Municipal Council Ranjeeta Dhama said a private company was given charge of cleaning all drains in the region. “There are 72 major drains and 22 minor drains in the area. Every year, we issue clear instructions to the company to ensure timely cleaning, especially before the rainy season. But they consistently fail to perform their duties. We have served multiple notices to them in the past, and now we intend to issue yet another one,” Dhama said.Police said they have not received any complaint over the incident. Earlier this month, Mukesh Goswami, a 55-year-old labourer living in Ghaziabad’s Kotwali, was walking to his home in the rainstorm around 8pm when an advertisement hoarding came loose and collapsed, killing him on the spot.

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