A 25-year-old man was electrocuted when he took the support of an iron fencing on the ground floor of a building while trying to negotiate a waterlogged stretch off Elgin Road on Friday evening.

Sourav Prasad Gupta, who was originally from Bihar and ran a snacks store on Justice Dwarkanath Road, was taken to Shambhunath Pandit Hospital where he was declared dead.

CESC officials said on inspecting the spot, they found that power had been drawn from an electric meter in a building on 2/3 Dwarkanath Road in an unauthorised way to illuminate a metallic structure on the fence.

“Our team immediately disconnected that meter. A formal complaint will be lodged with police against the consumer of that electric meter,” said a CESC official.

The police said Gupta lived in a rented apartment close to the spot where he was electrocuted.

The Kalighat pumping station, which records rainfall in Bhowanipore-Kalighat and adjoining areas, recorded 126.9mm of rainfall between 4am and 8pm on Friday.

The impact of Cyclone Dana that brought heavy showers flooded the roads in the neighbourhood leaving many with no option but to wade through the floods or take the support of gates and fences to walk through the water.

The local Trinamool Congress councillor Ashim Basu said as a precaution, the KolkataMunicipal Corporation had disconnected the powersupply to all the tridents and KMC lamp posts since evening.

“It (the cause of the electrocution) could not have been because of any KMC installations. It is mandatory to switch off the power supply to the lamp posts and the tridents when it is raining,” Basu said.

He said the youth came in contact with an iron railing that had a decorative light. “It may have been the light. It is very unfortunate. We always advise people to install decorative lights only inside their premises,” he said.

Officers of Bhowanipore police station said Gupta lived here with his father. The rest of their family lives in Bihar.

“At present, his father had gone to their hometown. We have informed his father. The body will undergo post-mortem on Saturday,” said anofficer.

In 2016, a 14-year-old boy returning home from tuition was electrocuted when he grabbed a trident lamp post to balance himself while wading through thigh-deep water in Bhowanipore after a heavy downpour.

Howrah death

A man in his late 30s was found dead on an inundated road in Howrah’s Tantipara on Friday afternoon.

The police identifiedhim as Gautam Chattopadhyay, a casual worker with the Howrah Municipal Corporation.

Eyewitnesses told the police Chattopadhyay was returning home on Friday afternoon when he fell in the water. Bystanders took him to a nearby hospital where he was declared dead. The police said the cause of his death would be ascertained after the post-mortem.