A routine ride turns fatal: Engineer crushed in Chennai girder collapse

C. Ramesh, a 40-year-old service engineer who maintained billing machines for hotels, had just wrapped up work on Thursday evening. At 8:50 p.m., he called his wife Rekha, assuring her he’d be home in Kattupakkam within the hour. That was the last she heard from him.

By 10 p.m., growing anxious, Rekha—who works as a nurse in Porur—contacted Anbu’s wife. Ramesh, always punctual and communicative, had gone silent. Anbu, Ramesh’s close friend, left his night shift and began tracing Ramesh’s regular route along Mount-Poonamallee Road.

Tragically, at Manapakkam, Anbu encountered the wreckage of a girder collapse. Fearing the worst, he alerted police. A bike was trapped under the debris, matching Ramesh’s description. Soon after, police brought out Ramesh’s bag. “I knew it was him when I saw his toolkit,” Anbu recalled, devastated. Ramesh’s body was recovered by 3 a.m.

He leaves behind his wife, a 10-year-old daughter, and a 77-year-old father.

A senior police officer later revealed that a far larger tragedy was narrowly avoided—a crowded MTC bus had passed the site mere seconds earlier.

Police have charged four Larsen & Toubro staffers with culpable homicide not amounting to murder. As the city mourns a man lost to negligence, questions loom over safety measures at construction sites.

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