Mumbai: A 19-year-old worker of a contractor appointed by BMC was electrocuted after entering an artificial pond created for Ganesh idols’ immersions while an electric pump motor was still running in Jogeshwari East after Saturday midnight.Meghwadi police lodged an accidental death report. Artificial ponds need water pumped in and out regularly.A police officer said the worker, Rohit Rathod, entered the pond created near Shyam Nagar lake after the last idol for the day arrived. He was unaware that the motor immersed in the pond was running. “He died of electrocution on the spot. Action will be initiated if negligence is found during the probe,” said the police officer. DCP (west zone-3) Datta Nalawade confirmed the death. Rathod was declared brought dead at Trauma Care Hospital at Jogeshwari.Police said BMC has set up five artificial ponds for Ganpati idol immersions in the vicinity of Shyam Nagar lake area. BMC claimed the pond, along with three others, was closed after midnight and Rathod entered it thereafter.In July, two college students fell unconscious after suffering severe electric shocks from an underground exposed electrical wire while wading through a waterlogged stretch of the Mumbai carriageway of the Sion-Panvel highway in Navi Mumbai. The two were rushed to a hospital by an auto driver, who used his presence of mind to pull them out of the water with a tree branch. The girls were returning home from their college and were navigating the flooded highway after alighting at a bus stop while holding hands to reach the pavement when they collapsed.
