Youth tries to enter flat via window, falls eight floors to death
CHENNAI: A 21-year-old engineering student fell to his death from the eighth floor of an apartment building in Chembarambakkam on Saturday night. The incident took place when S Naveen Kumar, the deceased, was trying to enter his rented apartment. He climbed on to the sunshade of an adjacent house and tried to step on a pipe to reach his flat, but lost his footing and fell, said the police. He resorted to the risky step after his roommate, who had the key to their apartment, had gone out to attend a call.
A final-year biotechnology engineering student at a private college in Sriperumbudur, Naveen was a native of Nellore in Andhra Pradesh and, along with seven of his friends, had rented two apartments on the eight floor of the 18-storey building in Chembarambakkam. “On Saturday they were celebrating a friend’s birthday. All of them gathered for drinks and after a while Naveen’s roommate, who had the key, went out to attend a call,” said the police.
Naveen wanted to go home but did not want to wait for his friend to come back with the key. He decided to enter the house through the common ventilator space. “The kitchen had a small ventilator window space through which Naveen got out and stepped on the pipe to jump to the window space in the back of his apartment. When he stepped on a pipe holder, he slipped and fell,” said Inspector Sivakumar from Nazarathpet station.
Quoting the friends, police said, a few of them insisted Naveen wait until his roommate returns, but Naveen said it was not a problem since he had done it before. A friend, who was watching, saw Naveen fall and raised an alarm. On information, personnel from Nazarathpet police rushed to the spot and sent the body to the Government Hospital, where he was declared dead. The body was handed over to his parents on Sunday morning after a postmortem.