Techie death | Urban safety issues: Greater Noida's tragedy exposes lapses

Noida: On a fog-shrouded night in mid-January, 27-year-old software engineer Yuvraj Mehta set out from his office in Gurugram, heading back to his home in Sector 150, Greater Noida.

Within moments, a routine drive turned into a nightmare that would spark national outrage and expose glaring gaps in urban safety and emergency response.

Late on the night of January 16, Mehta’s Maruti Suzuki Grand Vitara crossed a service road near an under-construction mall when it fell into a deep, water-filled pit, unseen due to dense fog and a lack of warning signs.

The abandoned construction site had become a stagnant water trap - a hazard residents had long decried. And the road had a sharp 90-degree turn without any warning sign on the waterbody that lay ahead.

Once his car landed in the water, Mehta climbed out of his sunroof and with his mobile phone torch called out for help. A bystander heard him and called emergency services immediately. Yuvraj had also called his father who had reached the spot soon after.

Emergency services arrived. Police officers, fire brigade personnel, State Disaster Response Force teams and eventually the National Disaster Response Force were present. Yet despite the scale of the response - involving upwards of 80 rescuers - the operation unfolded in disarray.

Trapped inside the pit, Mehta struggled to stay afloat. He climbed onto the roof of his SUV and, according to his father, clung on for nearly two hours as he desperately signalled for help. Dense fog and poor visibility compounded the danger, making it difficult for rescue teams to locate and extract him.

In an emotional recount to a TV channel, Mehta’s father, Rajkumar Mehta, shared the harrowing final exchange with his son, “Papa, mujhe bacha lo (Dad, save me)”. He said he rushed to the scene as soon as he received Mehta’s call, alerting both police and fire services, but found the rescue efforts severely under-resourced and disorganised.

Witnesses at the spot said that the police personnel refused to enter the water, even when the car was barely 50 metres from the road. Eventually, the car was pulled out three days later. In the absence of any response from the police and responders, local bystanders tried to intervene.

A Flipkart delivery agent, identified only as Moninder, tied a rope around himself and entered the freezing water in an attempt to reach Mehta, blaming official responders for their “lack of willpower” to enter the drain.

“We took him to the hospital but he was long gone by that time. I tried everything in my power to save him,” Yuvraj’s father told reporters, capturing the anguish of a parent who watched helplessly as the situation unfolded.

Moninder has later accused the police of pressurising him for speaking out the truth. “The police called me to the station to record my statement, but took me nearby where they asked me to stay away from the case. They advised me to switch off the phone and leave the place; I will speak the truth,” he told reporters.

Residents pointed out that the spot where Mehta’s car plunged wasn’t an unforeseen hazard. A similar incident involving a truck occurred roughly 10 days earlier, but no corrective measures were taken.

Civil society groups said Mehta’s death is symptomatic of broader infrastructure neglect in rapidly expanding urban clusters like Noida, where open pits, unmarked construction zones, and poorly lit roads are increasingly common.

Dr Velumurugan of the Central Road Research Institute said that none of the construction zones either on the highway or urban areas, or constructions related to drainage upliftment in areas are segregated.

“The demarcation is very poor; segregation is bad, and is purely found only on an urban localities. The incident, which took place on the outskirts of Noida, shows a lax attitude of the stakeholders who are maintaining these areas. Coupled with fog, this was a recipe for disaster,” he said.

The aftermath of Mehta’s death saw protests at the site and a wave of criticism directed at local authorities. Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh Yadav publicly condemned what he described as “negligence” by the Uttar Pradesh administration, stating, “This shouldn’t have happened.”

In response, the Noida Authority removed its CEO and appointed a new head after the controversy; though several questions have been raised on why the Noida DM was not removed from the post as well.