Labourer electrocuted at hospital site, third such fatality in a week

An 18-year-old man died on Sunday morning after suffering electric shock in the basement of an under-construction pediatric block building on the premises of Lok Nayak hospital where he was working as a labourer, police said.

Police said that initial inquiry showed that the labourer, 18-year-old Sujit Kumar from Bihar's Samastipur, accidentally stepped on a waterlogged floor and was electrocuted while trying to switch on a water pump.

A case of death by negligence and negligent conduct with respect to machinery was registered under sections 304A and 287 of Indian Penal Code against the building's contractor at the IP Estate police station, the police said.

Kumar's death was the third such incident in the city in the past one week. On June 25, al 35-year-old school teacher from Preet Vihar died of electrocution as soon as she stepped onto a waterlogged street in the parking lot of New Delhi railway station. The source of the shock was power from a live wire that was in contact with a railing she held on to. Around an hour before that, a teenager named Sohail died after he stepped in a waterlogged lane in Taimoor Nagar in south Delhi and suffered electric shock.