Electrocution of two children in Coimbatore: police register case of unnatural death

Tragic incident of children being electrocuted in Coimbatore park leads to police investigation and potential legal action.

A day after two children were electrocuted by an exposed underground cable at the park of a gated community in Saravanampatti police station limits in Coimbatore, the police on Friday registered a case under Section 174 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (unnatural or suspicious death).

The children, B. Vyoma (8) and Jiyans Reddy (4), were declared brought dead at a private hospital they were rushed to on Thursday. The bodies were handed over to the families on Friday evening after postmortem at Coimbatore Medical College Hospital.

Investigations were carried out by Saravanampatti police on Friday to determine if the contractor who had undertaken repair works for the Army Welfare Housing Organisation (AWHO) at Raman Vihar, which has about 400 houses, along Thudiyalur Road had complied with the norms specified for underground electricity cables.

The police had learnt that the underground electricity cable in the premises was laid seven years ago.

As per established norms, the depth should be at least 0.9m for laying 3.3kV to 11kV cables, 1.05m for 22kV to 33kV cables. The minimum depth of a low voltage cable should be 0.75m, it is learnt.

The cable, police sources said, got exposed three months back when the residents’ association had installed a slide in the park. The police were also investigating if the AWHO had obtained the consent of the City Corporation to instal the slide, in the open space reservation (OSR) area.

Based on the investigations, the case could be altered to Section 304A (causing death of any person by rash or negligent act not amounting to culpable homicide), police sources added.