Builder Arrested After Noida Techie Drowns In Water-Filled Pit

A builder has been arrested in connection with the death of 27-year-old Yuvraj Mehta, who drowned after his SUV fell into a pit dug for construction which was full of water. 

The Noida police announced on Tuesday that they have arrested Abhay Kumar, one of the owners of Wishtown Planners Pvt Ltd, and they are on the lookout for the other owner, Manish Kumar. 

The 20-foot-deep pit had been dug in Noida's Sector 150 for the construction of the basement area of a mall in 2021, but had been filled with water since the year after that. After Mehta's death, a First Information Report (FIR) was filed against Wishtown Planners and Lotus Greens based on a complaint by his father. Lotus Greens had later claimed that they had sold the project in 2019-2020 to Wishtown Planners and the Grihapravesh Group with the approval of the Noida Authority. 

On Monday, the Uttar Pradesh government had removed Noida Authority CEO Lokesh M, a 2005-batch IAS officer, and also ordered the constitution of a Special Investigation Team to probe the death. 

Lokesh M had, a day earlier, sacked a junior engineer and issued show-cause notices to other officials responsible for overseeing road and traffic-related work in Sector 150.

Mehta was killed in the early hours of Saturday after his Grand Vitara skidded in dense fog while taking a turn towards his apartment building, Tata Eureka Park. There were two barriers around a drain between the road and the pit, and his car either jumped them or broke through them and landed in the water. 

The software engineer, who did not know how to swim, managed to stay alive for about 90 minutes. His father reached the spot first after getting a call from him and was then joined by teams from the police, fire brigade and the State Disaster Response Force (SDRF). Because of the thick fog, Mehta could not be located and he drowned.

A truck driver, Gurvinder Singh, had also hit the low barrier next to the road earlier this month and his vehicle had barely missed falling into the pit. 

"The drain and the ditch are barely 10 steps from the road. There is no signboard or barricade. The truck hit the drain wall and overshot. The front tyres were in the air, and the middle ones got stuck on the wall. I jumped off the truck and landed in neck-deep water," he told NDTV.