The victim's mother found the body floating ten hours after the tragic accident
The failure of the authorities to cordon off an incomplete stormwater drain in T.Nagar claimed the life of a young woman.
The 24-year-old victim, M.Sarala, fell into the drain on Friday night. Her mother found the body on Saturday morning.
The incident occurred on the busy North Usman Road around 8.15 p.m. on Friday. Sarala, a resident of Anna Veethi, 1st Street, MGR Nagar, was walking to a bus stop on her way home from a spoken English class at the Ramakrishna Mission Matriculation School on Krishna Street.
No one seems to have noticed her falling as a big banner, announcing an event, blocked the view of the drain from the other side of the road.
Her body was found with severe head injuries in the drain, which had iron rods protruding out and concrete slabs that were broken, Soundarapandianar Angadi police sources said.
Body lies unnoticed
Though the area receives several hundred shoppers and there is a constant stream of vehicles on the arterial road, the body lay in the drain for over 10 hours.
Since Sarala did not return home till late night, her brother Sakthivel and his friend Dhanasekar came to the school searching for her. “As we could not find her we approached the Soundarapandianar Angadi police, who directed us to MGR Nagar police station where we filed a missing complaint and returned home,” Dhanasekar told The Hindu.
Around 6.30 a.m. on Saturday, Sarala's mother Amsa, accompanied by Sakthivel and Dhanasekar, came to North Usman Road on their way to the school to get information about her.
“She [Amsa] spotted her daughter's body floating in the drain just 50 metres away from the school. Sakthivel and I jumped in and pulled out Sarala, who was dead,” Dhanasekar added.
Post-mortem
A police team sent the body to the Government Royapettah Hospital for post-mortem.
A case of unnatural death under Section 174 of CrPC has been registered.
Sarala was the youngest daughter of Muniyan, a retired MTC conductor and Amsa. She was working as an English teacher in a primary school in MGR Nagar.
She had joined the spoken English class 15 days ago, Sarala's neighbour Adhilakshmi said.
2013 deadline
When contacted, Chennai Corporation Commissioner D. Karthikeyan said the deadline for the completion of the stormwater drain project is 2013.
“There was opposition among the public during the Assembly and local body elections when officials tried to complete the drain work in many areas,” he said.
Keywords: freak mishap
It is very pathetic! when would these contractors and the so called officials will change? do we really need to pay taxes to government? these storm water drains have already made the level of roads still lower, instead of draining the water it is making to clog on sides.
Why do we need an accident resulting in loss of lives to take
precautionary measures? We saw kumbakonam, and we did display some
knee jerk reactions, but we don't seem to learn. We have all become
utterly selfish and self centered. I'd like "The Hindu" to follow up
this case and let the readers know whether any government official is
punished for this loss of life.
What does the 2013 deadline and local body elections have to do with this girls death? Does it mean that many more lives would be lost before 2013 or did people in local elections oppose to this area being cordoned off as an open drain? Does the corporation commissioner expect to pass on the blame over to the politicians?
Some one needs to pay. Can we identify who is singularly responsible for this at the top of the hierarchy for this department and make him/her accountable, punishable. This is murder, coldblooded of an ambitious middle class woman. Look at the roads in Chennai and this is not just this year. Appalling, to say the least. Are we living in a Metro or in some filthy chawl (if one exists).
People are dying out there because of poor governance and lack proper infrastructure..this should be the burning issue to the government rather concentrating on settling political scores.Thank you Hindu for the article.
Higher officials,Engineers of PWD and SWD , any contruction project in the earth will have its own reasons for being held or for the delay.No one will care if the work is getting delayed or under process, but as engineers or supervisors of the project, should you not provide safety barriers or other safety sign boards to prevent such accidents.Kindly find out who the genius supervisor or the whole team to pay compensation for the loss of the life.And mark this in the lessons learned register to set as a guideline for the future projects.After all this advancement in engineering , these accidents makes me feel as if we are working in stone age.And this applies for each and every project whether the project is active or inactive , a final inspection should be carried out by the project engineer who is qualified to execute the project.Please respect human lives.
people please think..this story tells as if no one noticed her fall into that pit, this is ridiculous. This requires a inquiry whether its a murder or a drastic death.
The SWD building process leaves me a lot to be considered as an ill conceived project. The government has spent a lot of money on this and the design and verocity of the project as well as it's execution plan can't be considered well planned.Earlier also the SWD was done and it is now getting repeated. Don't see any real benefits other than the money going to the SWD by itself. Unless the streets are free of trashes and dirt during the rain all the water gets clogged at the mouth of the drain. Also the SWD even while construction are not cleared of dusts inside the canal. The quality of materials, workmanship, tining, delivery are all not up to the mark. Many a time we dont see any supervisory staff close by to watch the progress and disseminate quality direction to the workers. To my view it is a project when totally completed, will have to be redone shortly. At the end the project will see some beneficiaries but not general public.
What a tragedy, needless preventable loss of precious life, in a most unforgivable local mismanagement of life in the city. Instead of undoing anything good of previous regime, why cannot this govt try and understand priorities for TN - a garbage and filth free cities, towns and villages that will instantly improve public health and productivity.
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