A 57-year-old man died on the spot when he stepped on a live wire in the immediate vicinity of a Metro Rail site on M.K.N. Road in Alandur early on Wednesday.
According to police, around 12.10 a.m., a truck with a cherry picker — a crane with a platform — near St. Thomas Mount station, reversed and rammed a power supply post in front of P.S. Vinayagam’s house. The impact of the collision caused the overhead power supply cables to snap and fall from the post.
When Mr. Vinayagam stepped out of his home to check what was wrong, he came in contact with a live wire and was electrocuted. Neighbours rushed him to a private hospital, where he was pronounced ‘brought dead’. The Metro Rail construction at Alandur is being carried out by Chowgule & Co. Pvt. Ltd., a sub-contractor of Larsen and Toubro (L&T), who is contractor for CMRL.
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“There was no work going on at that time on the site. The driver had brought out the vehicle ahead of some work when he accidentally hit the post,” said a senior CMRL official. St. Thomas Mount Traffic Police (Investigation) have arrested the vehicle driver Sanjay Joshilkar (39) from Maharashtra under section 304 A (causing death by negligence).
Mr. Vinayagam, a resident of M.K.N. Road for over three decades, has three sons and a daughter, said T. Sudha, his niece. He was the sole breadwinner of the family and ran a wholesale lungi business in the area, she said.
“His wife V. Suseela, who had suffered kidney failure, was undergoing dialysis every alternate day. Only yesterday, he had gone with his daughter Jayachitra to some colleges and bought application forms for her admission to an undergraduate course,” she added.
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His body was taken to his native village Srikalikapuram in Thiruvallur district for the last rites.
This is the third accident at a Metrol Rail site in the last one year and second one on the M.K.N. Road site. In January this year, a 22-year-old worker died when a launching girder collapsed and fell on M.K.N. Road. In August 2012, one worker was killed and six injured when a crane boom failed at the site near Pachaiyappa’s College.