JOIN USFIR filed after Bengaluru techie drowns in flooded underpass
Family members of a 23-year-old software engineer who was killed after the MUV she was travelling in submerged in the flooded KR Circle underpass have lodged a police complaint, alleging that the negligence BBMP officials and the driver of the MUV caused her death.
Acting on the complaint filed by the elder brother of the deceased Bathula Bhanu Rekha, Halasurgate police have registered a case against the BBMP officials concerned and MUV driver Harish Gowda.
A senior police officer said that Rekha’s elder brother Bathula Sandeep has filed a complaint. The case has been registered under the IPC section 304 A – negligence causing the death. “We will be writing to BBMP seeking the details of the officials concerned for further necessary action. The procedure of arresting the driver Gowda is in progress,” the officer said.
The accused persons in IPC section 304 A are eligible for station bail as it is a bailable offence, another senior officer said.
Sandeep has not made any allegations against the hospital in his complaint. Police verified the CCTV cameras of the hospital after some people alleged that doctors didn’t treat her for almost 15 minutes.
A senior officer said the auto-rickshaw reached the hospital around 4.09 pm. Sandeep was with Rekha in the vehicle. Within a minute, the hospital staff brought the required equipment and did an ECG on her in the auto-rickshaw and declared her brought dead.
After a couple of minutes Rekha was taken inside the hospital and she was put on a bed. A few regional media persons and auto-rickshaw driver assumed that the doctors were not treating her and made allegations, but they had already declared her dead, the officer said.
If the family members file a complaint against doctors necessary action will be taken, the officer added.
Rekha’s body was handed over to the family after post-mortem at Victoria Hospital and further investigation is on.
Rekha, who was working in Infosys for almost a year, was showing her family members around the city. Her family had come from their native in Andhra Pradesh and stayed at Rekha’s house in Pragathi Nagar near Electronics City. On Sunday, Rekha took her family members including her mother, brother, her aunt and two nieces out in a rented MUV (Mahindra Xylo). They spent some time seeing Vidhana Soudha, High Court and surrounding places and were heading towards Corporation Circle when the MUV submerged in the waterlogged underpass at KR Circle.
The driver Harish Gowda claimed before the police that he suggested to the family that he will take the road adjacent to the flyover, but they insisted on going in the underpass. “We are verifying his claims,” another senior officer said.