New Delhi: “It was completely quiet. There was no noise. It was around 8 am when an auto driver told us a man was inside the ditch,” said Bhola Prasad, who runs a paan shop in Janakpuri across the street where Kamal Dhyani was found dead Friday. “Then, we saw the fire brigade come to lift the body out.”
The circumstances surrounding the death of the 25-year-old bank employee have eerie similarities to those of Noida techie Yuvraj Mehta (27), who died last month after his car veered into a construction ditch lacking barricades and signage.
Now, the Janakpuri incident has triggered a political slugfest, with Delhi’s erstwhile ruling party AAP targeting the BJP government, questioning the Jal Board’s assertion that the 15-foot ditch into which Kamal fell was “barricaded and closed for public safety”.
“If there was barricading, is the police trying to say Kamal crossed over the safety nets and barricades and fell into the ditch? That is a complete lie,” AAP’s Tilak Nagar MLA Jarnail Singh told ThePrint. “Now the departments are just trying to cover up.”
Kamal, who worked at a private bank in Rohini, fell into the ditch on Janakpuri’s Professor Joginder Singh Marg with his bike while on his way home to Vikaspuri. Hours later, he was lifted out by fire officials—lifeless.
“This is not an accident, but murder,” AAP convenor and Delhi’s ex-CM Arvind Kejriwal tweeted after the news broke.
The Delhi Jal Board has dug up pits along the road leading up to Joginder Singh Marg to lay sewer lines. Green nets barricade a large part of the dug-up areas, but there are gaps, with the ditches that have been freshly carved out left unbarricaded.
An FIR has been filed at the Janakpuri police station under Section 105 of the Bharatiya Nyay Samhita (culpable homicide) against the contractor in charge of the sewer-laying work, and Delhi Jal Board officials with jurisdiction over the project.
Kamal’s brother, Mayank Dhyani, told the media that his brother, in his last call late Thursday night, had said he would be home in 10 minutes. He never did.
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‘No lesson learnt’
According to police, Kamal’s family—worried when he did not return their calls or come home—first approached the Vikaspuri police station at 1.35 am Friday before they reached Janakpuri police station.
It was Kamal’s twin Karan who reached the Vikaspuri police station in search of his brother, but the police had no information on him yet.
Since his brother’s last call was from the Janakpuri District Centre, Karan rushed to the Janakpuri police station where he reached at 2.50 am. There, he met a sub-inspector, who tracked Kamal’s mobile phone location, placing him near Possangipur Park in Janakpuri.
At the Janakpuri police station, Kamal was reported as missing, and his information was circulated among the local police personnel through a WhatsApp group.
Officers hit the ground, conducting searches all over the park, the nearby parking spots, and surrounding areas, Deputy Commissioner of Police (West Delhi) Sharad Bhaskar told ThePrint.
Eventually, Kamal was found and was rushed to Deen Dayal Hospital in Hari Nagar, but doctors declared him “brought dead”, Bhaskar added.
“Once the body was lifted out, we saw there was no movement,” Neeraj, who comes to the locality to play football with his friends, told ThePrint. Soon after, “the police and leaders started arriving and made promises to Kamal’s family that they would do their best”, he added.
It was after the body was shrouded in a white cloth and taken away that Janakpuri MLA Ashish Sood and Delhi Deputy CM Parvesh Verma reached the spot, Neeraj said. “They came and sought reports from Delhi Jal Board officials.”
Since then, the incident has drawn considerable media attention, especially after the Aam Aadmi Party tweeted about it.
Saurabh Bhardwaj shared a post on X with photos of Kamal and his bike in the ditch. “BJP has learnt nothing from the Noida incident,” his caption said.
One death, many versions
A two-member inquiry committee was constituted by the Delhi Jal Board to look into the incident. In its preliminary report, it said that “the service road where underground sewer line laying work had commenced was barricaded and closed for public safety”.
“However, additional safety measures should have been adopted,” a Delhi Jal Board statement on X said, adding that the executive engineer, assistant engineer, and junior engineer of the project division concerned had since been suspended for “prima facie negligence”.
The Delhi Jal Board said strict action would follow if any official is found at fault in the longer, more intensive investigation.
People who frequent the area offered conflicting accounts.
While some said the accident happened at a site where there was no safety netting, others shared different versions.
Asked about public safety protocols at the sewer line-laying area, a vegetable vendor, Shivam Singh, whose cart stood at the turn of the road, said he operates in the area weekly and saw it barricaded even last Friday.
“I don’t think it is confirmed that the man fell due to poor barricading. I come here often, and for the last few days, the safety netting has been in place,” Neeraj said. He, however, added, “This barricade is newer than the ones on the rest of the road. Kamal might not have known about it if he had not been coming here daily.”
Kamal, though, used the same route between Rohini and Vikaspuri every day while travelling between office and home, according to his family.
AAP MLA Jarnail Singh claimed, “This barricading happened after the accident, not before.”
Lok Sabha LoP Rahul Gandhi also joined the row, calling the incident a fallout of greed and carelessness on X.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)
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