21-yr-old crushed in lift after rescuing woman

Minutes after he rescued a woman who had got stuck in a lift, a 21-year-old life maintenance died after he got stuck between the lift’s roof and a concrete wall inside an elevator shaft.

Minutes after he rescued a woman who had got stuck in a lift, a 21-year-old life maintenance died after he got stuck between the lift’s roof and a concrete wall inside an elevator shaft.

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The incident took place at a multi-storey residential complex in south Delhi’s RK Puram area on Sunday, police said.

The deceased has been identified as Haider Ali, a lift operator. “The incident occurred when Ali was repairing a faulty lift at an elevator shaft in N-block of MS Flats in RK Puram’s Sector 13. He died when the elevator came crashing down while he was on its roof checking the nature of the technical fault,” said a senior police official.

According to police, Ali, a native of Moradabad, Uttar Pradesh, was stuck in the elevator shaft for more than two hours and was pronounced dead when his body was finally extracted and rushed to the AIIMS Trauma Centre.

“I was stuck in the elevator with my sister just 15 minutes before the incident. The lift was going up and down at high speed and I called the emergency number from inside the lift. Ali came and rescued us. He was trying to fix the problem when the lift went into freefall,” said Radhika Kumari, a domestic help employed at the eight-storey building.

The building is home to several bureaucrats serving in the Central government and is owned by the Central Public Works Department (CPWD).

“The lift was on the fourth floor. Ali was on its floor when it just fell. He was stuck between the roof and the concrete wall. The doors had to be broken open before he could be freed from the debris. It took us two hours,” the officer said.

Police said the maintenance work for the elevators in the residential complex has been outsourced to a private firm called Swastika.

“We have registered a case of causing death due to negligence against unknown persons at the Sarojini Nagar Police Station at the moment and are in the process of affixing culpability for the same,” the officer added.