Open Pits, Dark Roads: NDTV Surveys Noida's Hazardous Traps After Techie Death

Pushkar Chandna slumps into a chair inside his Noida apartment in Sector 110, a thick sheaf of letters spread across the table. Some are flung aside in frustration, others creased from being handled too often.

"I've been writing to the authorities since 2021, since the day I moved here," he says, his voice tight with anger. "They call these high-rise societies. But look at the water, it is terrible. No analysis or treatment is available. On days, the Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) goes up to 2,500 too. It is extremely hazardous."

The 73-year-old pulls out a TDS meter and dips it in. It beeps sharply, the numbers climbing before freezing above 1,600. Chandna holds it up like an exhibit in a courtroom. For him, the verdict has been clear for years.

And he isn't alone.

Across Noida's towering housing societies and localities, residents are increasingly anxious and nervous, caught in an urban planning mess where promises of modern living have given way to daily fears about safety, health and neglect.

An open drain in Sector 136, Noida.
Photo Credit: Anushka Garg

27-year-old techie Yuvraj Mehta died on January 16 after his car flung into an open pit in Noida's Sector 150. He cried for help for almost two hours even as his father watched helplessly. His death exposes how residents here are collateral to a budding systemic failure. An SIT has been formed to probe his death. 

A week after Mehta died an agonising death blamed on sheer negligence, NDTV spent 24 hours on the ground to reveal the many death traps in Noida - multiple open drains, pits, broken roads, and dark stretches without functional streetlights.

Incomplete buildings lie in a state of disrepair in Supertech Capetown.
Photo Credit: Anushka Garg

Hazards Everywhere

What emerged was a grim portrait of a city in decay. Broken urban planning. Housing societies marketed as gateways to security now stand as health and safety hazards. Homes that promised comfort now breed fear. Families are left with grief and a question that echoes through these concrete corridors: who will take responsibility?

When NDTV contacted Arpit Singh, Deputy General Manager of the water department in Noida, he said that in two months, the pipeline to Lotus Panache, Sector 100, Noida, will be completed and residents will get better water quality. He said that four sectors already draw from this line, with provisions for more. Once it is fully utilised, TDS will drop naturally. Singh added that high TDS complaints center on Lotus Panache, while Supertech and other 7X sectors get 80 per cent water from the Ganga river. Singh also said that elevated TDS also often stems from internal factors, like unclean society reservoirs due to poor maintenance.

Garbage dumpyard in an open plot in Noida.
Photo Credit: Bismee Taskin Islam

Standing near the open drain in Sector 136, a resident Pawan Choudhary, said, "The embankment has been broken for a while, authorities have been informed about it several times and demands have been made for a proper wall. Multiple cars have fallen into this drain, including a child who fell five years ago. But there has been no permanent solution."

Living Amid Ruins

Not very far away, residents of Supertech Capetown are grappling with another grim reality. Open grounds once promised as parks and villas now sit abandoned, dangerous voids where parents fear their children could fall and never be seen in time.

Dark stretches without functional street lights were seen in Sectors 83, 90, 128.
Photo Credit: Anushka Kumari

All around, incomplete constructions rise like ghosts of stalled ambition. Skeletal buildings, left to rot mid-way, tower over daily life. Like many housing societies across Noida, Supertech Capetown remains trapped in a legal limbo after its builders declared insolvency, leaving residents to pay the price for promises that were never kept.

"We select societies for safety. But one can see the level of safety," Kismat, a resident of Capetown said, standing near one of the pits. "Our children play in the society and when they do, we can't let them out of sight even for a second due to all of this," she added. 

Captain (retired) Devender Gaur said, "These buildings aren't in a state where people can stay for long. Balconies are peeling off. In the next two-three rains, it will blow off and the entire building will be damaged."

73-year-old Pushkar Chandna has been writing to authorities since 2021 about the water quality.
Photo Credit: Anushka Kumari

Even at night, the neglect that the city is suffering shows. There are roads without working streetlights and some stretches are visible only through car beams.

NDTV reached out to Krishna Karunesh, Additional Chief Executive Officer (ACEO) of the Noida Authority and District Magistrate Medha Roopam, but no response has been received so far.