KR Circle Underpass Tragedy: Car Driver, Civic Agency Engineers Booked After Woman Techie Died

A tragic incident occurred in Bengaluru where a 23-year-old woman named Banurekha drowned after the car she was traveling in with her family became stuck in neck-deep water at KR Circle underpass.

Banurekha, an employee at Infosys, was touring the city with her family who had come from Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh. Fortunately, personnel from the fire department were able to rescue the other family members.

The car ended up submerged as the driver attempted to navigate through the water. Nearby people rushed to help, throwing sarees and ropes to keep the family afloat. Despite efforts to rescue them, Banurekha unfortunately did not survive.

Meanwhile, police have registered a case against the engineers of the Bengaluru civic agency and the car driver who took the vehicle into the flooded underpass.

The Halasuru Gate police on Sunday booked a case based on a complaint lodged by Batula Sandeep, who is the relative of the victim B Bhanurekha.

Driver Harish said he was on the way to Hosur road via City Municipal Corporation office when his car got trapped in the flooded underpass on Sunday.

Harish said he saw an autorickshaw and a car crossing the underpass. When he was weighing the possibility of crossing it, an autorickshaw driver advised him to go ahead. ''That autorickshaw driver stopped but insisted that I should go, so I crossed... In just two minutes the entire underpass was filled with water and the car's engine got switched off,'' he told reporters.

On Sunday, Karnataka's chief minister, Siddaramaiah, visited the St Martha's Hospital and announced a compensation of Rs 5 lakh for the deceased woman's family. It was revealed that the family had hired a car for sightseeing, and due to heavy rainfall, the barricade at the underpass fell down, leading the driver to take the risk of crossing it.

Following the tragedy, the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike today started an audit of all the underpasses in the city.

''We are undertaking an audit of all the underpasses so that such incidents should not occur in future. We are closing those underpasses, which are not fit to use,'' Chief Commissioner Tushar Giri Nath told reporters.

Nath said he has given directions to the Chief Engineer of the civic agency to see that water drains out from these underpasses through the stormwater drains. According to him, such an exercise has been undertaken at 18 underpasses in the city.