The nine-feet-wide open drain in Noida Sector 85 is barely distinguishable amid the concrete, sand and shrubs which surround it. (Gajendra Yadav)
On Tuesday night, Basant Kumar (35) had been sleeping on a cot less than five metres away from an open drain at the Sector 58 roundabout when he was woken up by a loud noise and water splashing on him.
“The bamboo bridge and sticks on the drain had been broken… and I saw a car in the water. I rushed to the police chowki for help,” said Kumar. Less than an hour later, the body of a 28-year-old radio station employee was recovered from the drain using a crane.
Along the 1 km-long stretch in Sector 85 — from Yakubpur village to an under-construction Aqua Line Metro station — the nine-feet-wide open drain is barely distinguishable amid the concrete, sand and shrubs which
surround it.
Cemented on both sides, the drain has nearly five feet of waste water and garbage. There is also no barrier around it, and neither are there any signboards in the vicinity to indicate the presence of the drain.
Police said around 10.30 pm on Tuesday, Tania Khanna, a senior sales manager at Radio Mirchi , was heading to Greater Noida in her Hyundai Verna. She tried to make a turn at the roundabout but she allegedly lost control and the car fell into the open drain, police said.
“It seems she tried to brake near the roundabout. There are skid marks from the car tyre all the way from the roundabout till the drain. It appears that the car was being driven at a high speed,” said Neeraj Kumar, police chowki-in-charge of Sector 85.
On Thursday afternoon, marks of the car tyres were visible over a distance of 40-50 metres between the roundabout and the drain.
Police said the car turned turtle when it fell inside the drain and the woman couldn’t get out as the doors got locked.
Three nurseries are also located along a portion of the drain. Kumar, who runs one of these nurseries, said, “The high mast street-light located in the middle of the roundabout works fine and throws enough light till the back of my nursery. Some streetlights between my nursery and the police chowki across the road weren’t working but they have been fixed today.”
Kumar added, “Had the drain not been there, the car would have entered the nursery and landed close to where I was sleeping. Because the level of the road is a little higher than that of the drain, it is possible that people might not notice it. They should put a railing around it.”
While locals maintained that seven streetlights had been put in place on Thursday, officials at Noida Authority could not be reached for comments.