A Kerala man who went missing after the car that he was driving was washed away into a flooded field was found dead by rescue workers on Sunday afternoon, following an intense search that lasted over 10 hours. Ernakulam native Justin, a taxi driver, was returning home after dropping a passenger in Kottayam in the wee hours of Sunday morning when the incident happened.
Justin was travelling on a road flanked by a flooded field, near Manarcad. In the dark, he tried to cross the flooded Manarcad-Thiruvanchoor road, but his car got stuck midway, due to the water that had flown onto the road from the paddy field. According to rescue workers, Justin had managed to get out of the car and called a crane operator in the region to help him get the car out.
When the crane operator came, he asked Justin to go back inside to unlock the hand brake of the car, so that the car would move freely.
“When Justin entered the vehicle to do this, a sudden and strong water current hit the car and the car door closed on him. The vehicle started to drift away into the flooded marsh. According to the crane operator, it was dark and the car soon went out of sight. He was the one who informed the police about the incident,” said Ashraf Kutty, president of ‘Nanma Kootam’ who are helping out in rescue operations, along with fire and rescue officials.
Though a team of the National Disaster Response Force rushed to the spot on Sunday morning, Justin could not be found. Later, around 2.30 pm on Sunday, Justin’s car was found in the water, a few metres away from where he had drifted off.
“We are a group of people doing rescue work in disaster-hit spots. We were informed about the incident by the Kottayam District Collector by 9 am. It was after a long search that finally, our team found out the vehicle that had plunged into the flooded water body. Justin was found inside the car. We had to break open the window to open the car and take him out. He had passed away,” said Ashraf Kutty, president of Nanma Kootam, a group working in disaster-prone areas in the region.
Ashraf says that before the accident, Justin had even taken his documents which were in the car to a house nearby, so that they won’t get wet while trying to lift the vehicle. “It was such an unfortunate incident. It was an odd time and there were not many people around to help,” adds Ashraf.
Recently, in another rain-related accident, two people who were trying to cross a bridge got washed away in the floodwater. The body of one person was found.