Ghaziabad: Four trapped in lift at Raj Nagar District Centre, rescued after 1 hour

Three women and a girl who were visiting a renowned sweets shop at the Raj Nagar District Centre (RDC) in Ghaziabad were trapped in a lift and were rescued only over an hour after being trapped.

Three women and a girl who were visiting a renowned sweets shop at the Raj Nagar District Centre (RDC) in Ghaziabad were trapped in a lift and were rescued only over an hour after being trapped. The incident took place on Wednesday afternoon.

The women and the girl were trapped in the lift from 4.15pm to 5.30pm on Wednesday. (Sakib Ali/HT Photo)

The family members of the victims said that the incident took place around 4.15pm when the group entered a lift and got stuck between the ground floor and the first floor of the building.

“They were trapped for over an hour, nearly one-and-half hours. They were moving in the lift to the second floor but got trapped between the ground floor and the first floor. The group started shouting and also pressed the alarm system, which alerted the building staff. My wife called me immediately and I had to rush to the spot,” Navin Grover, a resident of A block, Kavi Nagar, said.

“Later, the staff called up the lift maintenance company officials, who arrived and took the lift further upwards, towards the top floors, to rescue those stuck in the lift. It was a lucky escape. Also, they did not suffocate much as it is winter. Finally, the women and the girl exited the lift after an hour’s struggle, around 5.30pm,” he said.

Taking a note of recurrent incidents of lift malfunction, members of the apartment owners’ association federation had also prepared a draft of the UP Lifts and Escalators Act and had forwarded it to the UP chief minister, with a request to get it translated into an Act.

“The draft is still pending. However, in 2015, we moved a public interest litigation petition on such incidents related to lifts and requested the court to direct the government to enact a Lifts’ Act,” Alok Kumar, a social activist from Indirapuram, said.

“There are hundreds of highrises in Ghaziabad and Noida and a strong regulation is needed in this regard. We had also requested for installation of automatic rescue devices that take the lifts to the nearest floor in case of a malfunction. The petition is still pending,” Kumar said.