Inside the Noida death that exposed emergency failures

Nearly two hours later, 27-year-old Yuvraj Mehta was dead. Questions remain over delayed rescue and unsafe roads.

Transcript

00:00A 27-year-old man stood on top of his sinking car in Noida, in the dark, in the fog, for nearly two hours.

00:09His name was Yuvraj Mehta. He did not die instantly.

00:13That's the part we should not forget.

00:15He stayed alive long enough to call his father, long enough to shout for help, long enough for people to hear him.

00:23That's what he kept saying. This was not a hit and run.

00:26This was not bad luck. This was slow, visible, preventable death.

00:31Yuvraj drove into a 70-foot deep drain or a massive construction pit or the basement of an under-construction mall,

00:37depending on which official description you prefer.

00:39Because the road had no lights, no barricades, no reflectors and a broken boundary wall that residents had been complaining about for years.

00:47When he fell in, he did not panic. He climbed out of the car. He stood on the roof.

00:51He used his phone's torch to signal for help.

00:54People heard him. Some recorded him. Police reached the spot. Rescuers reached the spot.

00:59But according to the family and eyewitnesses, no one entered the water.

01:03Why? Because they could not swim.

01:05Because visibility was zero.

01:07Because safety protocols mattered more than a man drowning in front of them.

01:11Let's pause on that.

01:12In the Delhi NCR, one of India's richest urban belts, emergency responders arrived without basic rescue equipment.

01:17You'd expect in any city that keeps digging giant pits next to public roads.

01:22The state disaster response force came later.

01:24By then, the phone light went off.

01:26By then, the voice stopped.

01:28Only after Yuvraj died did the system wake up.

01:30FIRs were filed.

01:32Developers blamed each other.

01:33The Noida authority suspended a junior engineer.

01:36Barricades were installed after the death.

01:38Candle marches were held after the death.

01:41This is how human life works in NCR.

01:43Alive, you're a traffic problem.

01:45Dead, you're a press release.

01:47What killed Yuvraj Mehta was not fog.

01:49It was not fate.

01:50It was not even just negligence.

01:52It was institutional indifference.

01:53The kind where everyone is present, everyone is watching and no one acts.

01:59And by the time help of any value arrives, you're already silent.

02:02I'm Manish Abhikari.

02:04First things fast.