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Electrocution deaths in Hyderabad processions: Towering idols and dangling wires make for a fatal mix
The Krishna Janmashtami procession in Ramanthapur here was meant to be a celebration, but joy turned into horror when a trolley carrying an idol brushed against overhead wires, electrocuting five people on the spot. What unfolded on Monday night was not just a freak accident but part of a deadly cycle that has made Hyderabad's skyline a trap during festivals.
The Southern Power Distribution Company of Telangana has begun cutting off cables that were strung to the utility's infrastructure.
Towering idols, pulled through narrow lanes under a jungle of wires, have often proved to be hazardous. On July 8, a man lost his life while fixing an advertisement banner to an arch in Kukatpally. Weeks before that, two men in Korutla were killed when a crane ferrying an idol touched a 33kV high-tension line. After the Ramanthapur incident, tragedy struck again in Bandlaguda on Tuesday, where two more lives were lost as a 23-foot idol grazed the wires above.
Together, the string of accidents has amplified urgent calls to regulate idol heights and clear the city's skyline of dangerous, dangling cables before more lives are cut short.
If the tragedies have underlined anything, it is the magnitude of risk. The tallest Ganesh idol in Hyderabad this year, to be installed at Khairatabad, will soar at 69 feet from the ground up. At workshops across Dhoolpet, Uppal, Suchitra Junction, Miyapur and Attapur, artisans are sculpting idols that already tower well above 10 feet. In 2016, the Telangana High Court had advised capping the idol height at 15 feet — a suggestion that has stayed largely on paper, with wealthier organisers determined to outdo one another in terms of grandeur and scale.
Warnings, too, have come and gone with little impact. In 2024, chairman and managing director of the Southern Power Distribution Company of Telangana Ltd., Musharraf Faruqui called a meeting of cable operators and internet service providers, instructing them to remove the snarls of cables hanging dangerously from electric poles. Eight years earlier, the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation had sounded the same alarm. Both warnings have been ignored.
In 2016, Hyderabad saw the immersion of 91,154 Ganesh idols. Last year, the figure had swelled past 1,02,510. With it, the city's skyline has grown denser, not only with idols but with wires. What were once the lone strands of cable operators now jostle for space with electricity lines, fibre-optic networks, television connections and CCTV linkages, creating a chaotic web overhead.
On Tuesday afternoon, electricity department officials fanned out across Medchal, Vanasthalipuram, Kukatpally, Kokapet, R.K. Puram Asha Officers Colony and other parts of the city, snipping the hanging cables and leaving them in tangled heaps by the roadside.
