An electrician who was working on a contract basis for the Metro Rail project near Ashok Pillar in Ashok Nagar has been found dead under suspicious circumstances.
The police said that the man, whose body was found on top of the Metro Rail track under construction on Monday, could have been working on the electric lamp post on the elevated track structure and could have fallen down. Metro Rail officials, however, brushed aside the possibility of the death being an accident.
The police identified the deceased as Lingeswaran, 28, a native of Ramanathapuram who was residing at Maraimalai Nagar with his wife and child.
“He must have been readying the electric light for night work when the mishap happened,” the police said. The police are also probing other angles to the case, including murder. According to sources, the man’s mobile phone is missing.
While Metro Rail officials initially said that they were not aware of the death of a worker at the site, later in the evening they said that the deceased was a contract employee.
“There are limited number of workers on that particular stretch now. He had no work to complete there on Sunday night. It is not clear how he died,” a Metro Rail spokeperson said on Monday.
Lingeswaran’s death is the second fatality at a Metro Rail work site since the project started. In August this year, a worker was killed and six were injured when the crane at the site near Pachaiyappa’s College crashed.