BENGALURU: Two brothers were electrocuted at their farmhouse after they came in contact with a live wire at Hesaraghatta in Soladevanahalli police station limits on Sunday. The residents staged a protest before the BESCOM office following the mishap and alleged that the negligence of the staff led to the death of the youths. They also blocked Madure-Hesaraghatta Road for a while by keeping the bodies on the middle of the road.
The deceased are identified as Muniraju (19) and his brother Ravi (18), residents of Dasanahalli village in Hesaraghatta. They were into farming after discontinuing their school education.A senior police officer said the incident occurred around afternoon when Muniraju and Ravi were cutting weeds in the farm. As it started raining, they took shelter under a coconut tree when a live wire fell on it. Both came in contact with the live wire and died on the spot. The passersby who heard their screams, rushed to see what happened and alerted the villagers. The BESCOM staff also rushed to the spot and removed the wire to shift the bodies to the hospital for postmortem.
Angry villagers took the bodies to BESCOM office and demanded that suitable compensation be given to the family of the deceased.The villagers are not viewing the incident as an accident, rather they are convinced that it was a case of death due to negligence on part of BESCOM. The villagers had earlier repeatedly complained about the live wire hanging low and had asked for those wires to be fixed at a proper height to avoid people from getting electrocuted. But the BESCOM staff had ignored it. Sunday’s tragedy which resulted in the death of the siblings because of the same live wires, left the villagers furious.
More than 100 villagers blocked the road and senior officials from BESCOM convinced them to stop the protest after announcing the compensation. Locals kept candles in the middle of the road to demand immediate arrest of the officials concerned.The Soladevanahalli police have filed a case of negligence against BESCOM officials and further investigations are on.