At Wahed Nagar, merely standing on the road is enough reason to be electrocuted, given the ground clearance for the Extra High Tension (EHT) lines is not even three meters, instead of the mandatory 6.1 meters observed by the Telangana State Power Transmission Corporation (TSTransco). Engineers vouch that electrical induction is very powerful at such a distance.
Eighteen-year-old Mohammed Shafiq-ur-Rehman is unable to recall what struck him before he was flung from where he was standing, at Wahed Nagar, near Golnaka. He woke up with the right side of his face badly burnt. His 10-year-old friend Mohammed Danish was admitted to the Osmania General Hospital with 30% burns. Mohammed Dilbar, another person, scraped through with burns on his legs.
Neither of the three are in a condition to explain the severe burns they had sustained, though their teacher Shah Nawaz, from Madrassa Arabia Madina Tul Uloom, strongly believes that they must have been up to some mischief due to which they came in contact with the 132 kV lines.
However, an electrician from the locality Mohammed Jaleel recalls, “Quite a few people have been electrocuted. Not very long ago, an auto driver died of electric shock when he tried to toss a chopped tree into Musi”.
Syed Bilal, a social worker, recalls the death of a ragpicker from high voltage burns.
The ground clearance, nevertheless, was adhered to when the EHT lines were laid on the Musi River, along which Wahed Nagar lay, but the ground later came up by nearly 10 feet, thanks to illegal encroachments. One glance along the riverbank tells the severity of the encroachment. While the bank on the opposite side is lush with trees, the grey Wahed Nagar bank displays a virtual bund of demolition waste.
Local residents blame political forces offering impunity to the encroachers.
Instead of removing the illegally dumped waste, GHMC had stamped its approval on it by laying a CC road on the encroached land between Wahed Nagar and Shankar Nagar in 2016, reportedly under pressure from a the local legislator.
MLA Ahmed Bin Abdullah Balala, however, contends that the CC road contained the spread of Wahed Nagar into Musi. “In fact, a 100-feet road was sanctioned between Golnaka and Chaderghat, and this road was part of it. Due to encroachments, the road had to be narrowed down to 20-40 feet,” he says.
