CUTTACK: A 40-year-old man died of electrocution when he reportedly came in contact with an illegal high voltage electric fence at a farmland to prevent wild animals from damaging crops at Bheda Ramachandrapur village within Banki police limits on Monday.
The man has been identified as Mahadev Sahoo, a farmer of the village. Police quoting FIR filed by Bhimasen Sahoo, brother of the deceased, said one Jharia Gochhi alias Kanga and his two sons Biswanath and Indramani had fenced GI wires around their farm and had charged the fence with electricity to protect the land from wild boars.
In the morning hours, Mahadev had gone to pluck chillies from his land located adjacent to Gochhi's farmland and came in contact with the live fence and died due to electrocution.
It is alleged that despite requests from locals not to charge the GI wire fence, Gochhi turned a deaf ear and often used to connect live wire to the fence at night and disconnect it in the day. On Monday morning, he forgot to disconnect the live wire.
When Mahadev didn't return home, his wife launched a search and found him dead near the fence. As the news spread, local residents alerted the Banki police station following which a team of police rushed to the spot and started investigation.
"We have seized the body and sent it for postmortem. A case has been registered under section 304(A) of IPC against Gochhi who is on the run after the incident and further investigation is on," Banki police station IIC, SS Tripathy said.