New Delhi station death case: Railway engineer to join probe

The action against the engineer, Bharat Bhushan, was taken after the investigation into the case revealed his “negligence”

A 40-year-old senior section engineer of the Delhi electrical division of Indian Railways was bound down under Section 41.1A of the code of criminal procedure (CrPC) in connection with the death of 35-year-old school teacher Sakshi Ahuja, who died of electrocution at the taxi parking lot in Paharganj side of New Delhi railway station on Sunday morning, the Delhi Police said on Thursday.

An open electric circuit breaker box or at the parking of New Delhi Railway station on Sunday. (Raj K Raj/ HT Photo)

The action against the engineer, Bharat Bhushan, was taken after the investigation into the case revealed his “negligence in the upkeep and maintenance of the wiring cable at the incident spot that caused electricity leakage” leading to the electrocution, which claimed Ahuja’s life, said deputy commissioner of police (railways) Apoorva Gupta.

If a person is bound down, it means that they are bound to appear before the investigating officer as and when asked to join the investigation.

“Bhushan was asked to join the investigation on Wednesday. After his interrogation, he has been bound down under section 41.1A of the CrPC, because the sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) under which the case was registered were all bailable,” said DCP Gupta.

Northern Railway’s chief public relations officer (CPRO) Deepak Kumar declined to comment on action against the senior section engineer by the police.

A team of electrical experts from Indian Railways on Tuesday conducted an inspection of the incident spot, where the school teacher died after stepping onto a flooded street and accidentally coming into contact with a loose wire from a nearby electrical installation on Sunday morning, police said.

The inspection was conducted after the Delhi Police’s railway wing wrote a letter to the principal chief electrical engineer of Indian Railways, requesting an inspection of the spot from a technical angle to ascertain the faults that led to Ahuja’s death, police officers aware of the development, said.

“The report is awaited. The inspecting team removed the cables from the place of the incident and handed it over to the investigating officer. The cable has been seized as a piece of evidence,” added DCP Gupta.

Ahuja, a school teacher who lived in east Delhi’s Preet Vihar, was at the taxi parking lot on the Paharganj side of the station. She was hurrying to catch a train to Chandigarh where she was going on a summer vacation with her two children, parents, and two siblings. The incident occurred when Ahuja stepped off a concrete divider onto a waterlogged stretch near a light pole close to exit gate number 1. Eyewitnesses said that as soon as Ahuja stepped into the water, she suffered an electric shock and screamed before collapsing.

Taxi drivers present at the accident site said Ahuja’s two children, parents, and two siblings had a narrow escape as they were pulled away from the road just in time. Ahuja, however, remained stuck in the waterlogged road for nearly 25 minutes, eyewitnesses said, with the taxi drivers using wooden planks to try and save her. After she was finally pulled out, she was rushed to Lady Hardinge Hospital in a taxi, where she was brought dead, police said.