BANGALORE: A 31-year-old software engineer who tried to open the jammed door of his 17th-floor flat died when he accidentally slipped down from the railing in Whitefield around 6am on Tuesday.
Satya Ramachandran was a senior software testing engineer with Microsoft. Satya, his wife Divya, 29, and their two sons – four years old and eight months old – had come back from Tamil Nadu after the younger son’s mundan ceremony.
They stayed in their ‘D’ Block flat in Prestige Shantiniketan Integrated Township, Whitefield.
After they arrived from Tiruchirapalli in the morning, the family found the faulty main door jammed. That’s when Satya tried to walk on the railing affixed to the wall to reach the balcony and open the latch of the door by inserting his hand through an adjacent window.
Holding her baby, Divya nervously watched Satya inch on the railing. He was about to rest his first foot on the balcony parapet wall. The dew on the railing and his leather shoes made a lethal combination. Satya fell 17 floors down, hit the parking-lot floor below and died instantly.
He married Divya, also from Tiruchirapalli, six years ago. Divya had quit her job with a private company some time ago to take care of the second child.
The body was shifted to Vaidehi hospital for postmortem and was taken to Tiruchirapalli for cremation.
The Kadugodi police quoted Divya as saying: “We were tired after a night-long journey by a private bus. We reached the 17th floor with our luggage in a lift. My husband tried to open the main door, but found it jammed. Saying he would open the balcony door, he walked on the railing and slipped off.”
Deputy commissioner of police (South East) P S Harsha told TOI: “Satya was staying in Bangalore for the past 10 years and had shifted to Shantiniketan apartment a few years ago. (The death is) due to an accident.” Sridhar Chari, general manager, Prestige Shantiniketan Apartment Owners’ Welfare Association, said: “Satya was a brilliant individual. He was to fly to Australia in July on work.”
Divya’s sister-in-law Sharanya Sreenivas told TOI from Tiruchirapalli: “We have been facing this problem of getting locked out of the flat because the front door gets jammed. A couple of times, the family had sought the security guards’ help to get to the balcony and open the door by opening its latch through the window. Once in the past, Satya had managed to reach the balcony in a similar way. This% must have made him attempt to open the door on Tuesday. But the morning mist and sleepless journey must have been the reasons why he slipped and fell. We are in a state of shock.”
