Hyderabad: Highlighting yet again the dangers of open drains, a 24-year-old man from Andhra Pradesh fell into an open drain at Saroornagar on Saturday evening. He was said to be suffering from fits. An 18-hour-long rescue operation was mounted but Saroornagar police finally found the body of the man in the Musi river at Chaitanyapuri on Sunday.
According to the Saroornagar police, Harish, an ITI graduate from Gudur town in Nellore district of Andhra Pradesh had been suffering from a neurological disorder for some time.
At around 6 pm on Saturday, Harish went to meet his friends at Kodandaram Nagar near Eidgah in Saroornagar. The room was locked so he kept his bag outside and went to attend to nature's call. The bachelor accommodation does not have an attached bathroom so Harish had to use an outside bathroom under which a drainage line passes. While returning, he suffered a fit and fell into the drain, said the police, who were alerted by an elderly woman who is an eye-witness to the incident.
Teams of police, the disaster response force of the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation and the fire department mounted a rescue operation but Harish's body was found around five kilometres away after 18 hours of searching.
The drain was open. After about 15 metres it becomes a closed one till another three kilometres.
"The woman raised the alarm and passers-by gathered at the drain to rescue Harish but he has swept away in the waters. The rescue operation continued for about 18 hours. Several drainage pipelines were dug to rescue Harish, but his body was found in the Musi river at Chaitanyapuri on Sunday noon," said Saroornagar sub-inspector S Jayaram.
The SI said that Harish's mother stays in Gudur and his elder brother stays in Rajasthan. The case originally registered as a missing person case will be altered to suspicious death. After conducting the autopsy at the Osmania General Hospital, the body will be handed over to the brother, said SI Jayaram.
