A private bank manager and a cashier died after their SUV was submerged in water in a flooded underpass in Faridabad on Friday, an official said on Saturday. The underpass was flooded due to heavy rain in Delhi and the National Capital Region (NCR).
The deceased were identified as Punya Shray Sharma, manager of HDFC Bank in Gurugram's Sector 31 and Viraj Dwivedi, cashier at the same branch.
According to the official, the two employees were returning from Gurugram around 11 pm and their XUV 700 got submerged in the waterlogged underpass near the old Faridabad area.
The accident happened when Dwivedi driving to drop Sharma at his house in the Greater Faridabad area.
The victims drove into the waterlogged underpass, possibly ignoring the warning signs put by the Faridabad Police. The officer claimed that the cops had placed barricades and tied them with ropes so that none could enter the underpass.
Around 12 feet deep water had accumulated in the underpass during Friday's heavy rainfall which lashed several parts of the entire Delhi-NCR. The satellite city Faridabad received 56.4 mm of rainfall from 8.30 am on Friday to Saturday morning.
"The bank manager and the cashier probably misjudged the depth of the underpass and waded into the rainwater," the officer said.
According to the locals, as soon as they realised that they had gotten stuck in the water, both Sharma and Dwivedi tried to come out of their car but the vehicle got locked from inside.
After desperately trying for sometime, the duo managed to come out of their vehicle. They tried to save themselves by swimming out of the underpass, but drowned.
Sharma's body was recovered by the police along with the SUV around 11.30 pm on Friday. He was rushed to Fortis Hospital where doctors declared him dead on arrival
Divers retrieved Dwivedi's body around 4 am on Saturday morning.
Meanwhile, the locals alleged that there were no barricades or police personnel at the place of incident who could have stopped the victim duo from entering the underpass.
"We heard some noises from the underpass and rushed out of our houses. Me and my friend entered the water and dragged out the body of one person. We gave him CPR and then rushed him to nearby hospital where doctors said he had already died," an eyewitness said.
An orange alert (for heavy to very heavy rainfall) had been issued by the India Meteorological Department for both Thursday and Friday in Delhi and the weather office said a depression over southwest Uttar Pradesh was causing the rain.
Traffic jams and waterlogging were reported in several parts of NCR on Friday. In Gurugram, the affected areas included Hero Honda chowk, Rajiv chowk and IFFCO chowk.
Spells of rain continued on Saturday and a yellow alert (for moderate rainfall) is in place.
According to IMD data, Delhi has seen over 1,000 mm of rainfall this month, which is the highest since 2021 and the second highest in at least a decade.