No Swimmers, No Saviours: The Night Yuvraj Mehta Drowned minutes away from his home in Noida
On the foggy night of January 16, 2026, 27-year-old software engineer Yuvraj Mehta’s car skidded off a sharp 90-degree turn in Noida Sector 150, plunging into a deep, waterlogged trench at an under-construction site, which many locals refer to as a lake. Unable to swim, Yuvraj clambered onto his sinking vehicle’s roof, flashing his phone light and screaming for help for nearly 90 minutes. His desperate calls to his father, Raj Mehta, revealed his terror: “Don’t want to die,” he pleaded, as icy water rose around him.
Raj, living nearby, rushed an SOS to police at 12:06 am via 112. A police response vehicle (PRV) reportedly arrived in nine minutes, led by a sub-inspector or assistant sub-inspector trained in basic swimming and disaster response. Knowledge Park police station soon sent reinforcements, hurling ropes into the murky, fog-shrouded water, but Yuvraj remained invisible and out of reach. Fire brigade teams followed, emphasising surface rescues and firefighting; they lacked divers, gear, or masks for deep swamp dives and opted for a boat instead.
Fog, Fumbles, and Fate State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) and National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) escalated the effort, amassing around 80 rescuers by the trench edges. Yet, no one waded through the 50 metres of water to reach him, except a brave delivery rider who jumped in briefly but couldn’t close the gap.
Boats were launched from a rod-free side, but digging access took two hours. Dense fog thwarted visibility, and protocols paralysed action: police cited swimming gaps among some, fire officials awaited specialists from Meerut. Yuvraj’s cries faded around 1:30 am; his body extracted after five hours. He died of drowning and cardiac arrest.
Noida Engineer’s Pleas Ignored Amid Rescue Chaos
Raj Mehta decried it as “institutional failure,” watching helplessly as teams bickered over jurisdiction. The unlit, unbarricaded pit, linked to developers in the area, highlighted civic negligence in Greater Noida’s rapid sprawl. Police arrested two shareholders, Ravi Bansal and Sachin Karanwal, sealed MZ Wiztown’s office, and seized documents amid probes into the site’s safety lapses. Public outrage erupted, with media spotlighting “systemic apathy” on TV debates.
This tragedy exposes deeper rot: poor infrastructure at construction zones, foggy winters amplifying risks, and rescue silos where numbers don’t equate to heroism. Only a civilian dared the water; agencies hid behind rules. Yuvraj’s death demands accountability, from developers evading barriers to responders needing real-time training and gear. His father’s grief echoes a call for change before another loved one ends up becoming a statistic.