A 15-year-old Class IX student was electrocuted in her Dilshad Garden school on Friday after coming in contact with an electric wire that had fallen in a pool of water.
Priya Mishra was coming out of her classroom in Eknath Senior Secondary School around noon when the incident occurred. Police said some construction activity was on in the school and an electric wire had fallen in a puddle. She was rushed to GTB?Hospital, where doctors declared her brought dead.
?It is the result of school?s negligence. If the administration was aware of the fallen wire after Thursday?s rains, why didn?t they do anything?? said Priya?s aunt Sunita.
Priya?s father, Lalit Kumar, works with a private firm in Ghaziabad. A case of causing death due to negligence has been registered against the DSIIDC which was carrying out construction work in the school. Meanwhile, the Education department suspended the vice-principal of the school, Anita Rani.
Priya?s death is not a standalone incident. The recent rains have resulted in over 15 deaths due to electrocution. Newsline revisits some of these spots to take stock of the action taken by authorities, only to realise that very little has changed on the ground.
Chandni Chowk: On July 13, two persons were electrocuted in Dariba Kalan. The street was waterlogged following heavy rains. The victims came in contact with loose wire that had fallen on the street and were electrocuted. The incident, again, brought to light the mess of overhead cables plaguing the area for decades now.
Over a month later, the skyline of Chandni Chowk remains a tangled mess of local cable and electric wires. Both BSES and MCD officials have plans to move the wires underground, but the plan had been in the pipeline for five years now and will now take off only after the Games.
Mori Gate: A 36-year-old man and a seven-year-old boy were electrocuted on July 13 after tripping on a loose electric cable. Mori Gate, like all other areas in the Walled City, remains plagued with overhead cables. Authorities blame ?severe encroachment? in the area for the mess, but have failed to take action.
West Patel Nagar: Two children died on August 16 after their kite strings got entangled in high tension electric cables. BSES Rajdhani, the power supplier in the area, had said the victims had tried to disentangle the thread when they came in contact with the electric cables. Patel Nagar, a highly congested locality, is also a maze of overhead wires. The local cable operators were issued a notice by the MCD in January asking them to remove all overhead cables in time for the Games, but nothing has changed on the ground so far.
Mansarovar Park: Two persons were electrocuted on July 13. Both the victims were on cycles when a high-tension wire fell on them from a nearby pole. BSES officials said heavy rains had resulted in some cables coming off the hook. They were repaired the next day.
Pandav Nagar: A 48-year-old auto driver was electrocuted near a Metro station in March after an electric cable fell off a nearby pole. Locals had at the time said the ?pole had tilted and some wires had come off?. A case was registered against BSES, which blamed construction being undertaken by the PWD near the site for the incident. The area continues to battle a maze of electric cables.