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SUV submerges in flooded Faridabad underpass, 2 drown
A bank manager and cashier drowned in Faridabad after their car drove into a submerged underpass during heavy rains, amid rising monsoon-related fatalities.
The branch manager and a cashier of a private bank drowned late on Friday after they drove into a submerged underpass in Faridabad, the latest casualties of what has been a particularly deadly monsoon season in the national capital region (NCR) where civic infrastructure routinely crumbles following spells of heavy rain.
Police identified the victims as 48-year-old Punyasrrya Sharma, a vice president at HDFC Bank and the head of Sector 31, Gurugram branch, and 26-year-old Viraj Dwivedi, a cashier. Sharma’s body was found inside the car once rescuers managed to pull it out of the submerged underpass around midnight, while Dwivedi’s was fished out of the water four hours later.
Both were returning in an XUV 700 car from the Sector 31, Gurugram branch where they worked when they drove into the underpass near the Old Railway Station at approximately 11PM.
According to NIT police station house officer, inspector Samer, the duo was hailed by two policemen on a patrol motorcycle to stop before they drove in. “However, Sharma either could not see or did not pay attention to the policemen trying to stop them and went deep inside the underpass,” he said, adding that the patrolling policemen then alerted senior officials and soon a crowd gathered to help.
Kuldeep Singh, deputy commissioner of police, (NIT), said soon after the alert was received, police personnel and the State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) were pressed into action.
“The SDRF divers managed to reach the SUV and locate Sharma inside it in the muddy water. He was rushed to Fortis hospital but doctors declared him brought-dead,” the DCP said.
Singh said Dwivedi probably managed to get out of the SUV when it was sinking by shattering window panes, but may not have been able to swim to safety.
“The water was several feet deep,” Singh said, and that the second body was fished out at around 4am by drivers who set off on a search once the car was winched out of water and it became clear Dwivedi was missing.
Police said Sharma was returning home in a township in Sector 86 in Faridabad, and Dwivedi, who lived in Sector 28, Gurugram, was travelling with his senior for a night halt at his residence after finishing work.
Their deaths came on a day the region received heavy rains. During several such episodes of rain this year, the civic and administrative lapses in NCR cities have led people to die by drowning and electrocution or crushed under collapsing structures, including, infamously, at the Delhi airport.
Friday night’s deaths in Faridabad took the toll in that city to five. Across the four main cities of NCR – Delhi, Gurugram, Noida, Ghaziabad and Faridabad --- the number has now crossed well over 60, with 49 of these fatalities occurring in the national Capital alone. There were four such fatalities in Gurugram and two in Ghaziabad.
NIT station’s head Samer, who goes by one name, said barricades had been placed ahead of the underpass so that motorists do not cross it. “However, with continuous rainfall, they had become invisible after being submerged. The SUV driver probably could not see them,” he said.
Faridabad’s underpasses have increasingly emerged as a problematic solution for a unique problem the city faces: it is almost bifurcated by an arrow-straight stretch of the arterial railway lines that connects Delhi with the country’s western regions.
In the nearly 20-km stretch between Faridabad’s border with Delhi and till the point the town ends on the Ballabgarh end, there are only four main flyovers for road traffic to cross the railway tracks. The rest are underpasses, which invariably get submerged during spells of heavy rain. The waterlogging at these stretches also forces pedestrians to make track crossings on foot, often with fatal results.
A senior official of Faridabad metropolitan development authority, who asked not to be named, said the water that flooded the underpass was at least 12-15 feet deep. “The underpass is still unusable as it is submerged. Police have kept the area blocked. There had been intense rainfall in Faridabad on Friday and a large number of areas were completely waterlogged due to it,” he added.
An IMD official posted in Chandigarh said the Faridabad district received 56.4mm rainfall – heavy by the city’s standards -- in the 24 hours preceding 8.30am on Saturday. “This is more than 20 times higher than the normal rainfall which should have been around 2.6mm,” he said
The bodies of Sharma and Dwivedi were handed over to their families after autopsy on Saturday and a formal inquiry was launched on the basis of the complaints of the families of both the deceased. Police said Sharma was originally from Sitapur and Dwivedi from Ambedkar Nagar, both in Uttar Pradesh.
