The Allahabad High Court on Thursday ordered the release of the director of a real estate company arrested in connection with the drowning death of a 27-year-old software engineer at a water-filled excavation plot in Noida’s Sector 150, ruling that the arrest was made in violation of mandatory legal procedure.
Abhay Kumar, the promoter and director of MZ Wiztown Ltd, was released from judicial custody after a bench quashed his arrest and remand orders. The court found that police failed to comply with Clause 13 of the arrest memo, which requires that an accused person be informed of the grounds for arrest and be provided a copy of the memo at the time of detention.
The bench, headed by justices Siddharth and Jai Krishna Upadhyay, cited a January 22, 2026 order of the Allahabad High Court in “Umang Rastogi vs The state of Uttar Pradesh” in which the bench had observed that the petitioner was arrested without disclosure of the grounds of arrest.
“We find that the facts of this case are covered by the aforesaid judgment of this court by violation of Clause 13 of the memo of arrest,” the court stated. The petition, argued by senior counsel Manu Sharma, had termed Kumar’s January 20 arrest an “illegal custody.”
In ordering Kumar’s release, the high court also directed a departmental inquiry into the actions of the police officials responsible for the arrest. The petition had sought the quashing of the remand orders issued by a local chief judicial magistrate on January 20 and 21, arguing the detention was null and void from its inception.
Kumar’s counsel, Ram M Kaushik, confirmed his client’s release from custody in Greater Noida following the court’s order.
Kumar’s arrest stems from an incident on January 17, when 27-year-old Yuvraj Mehta died after his car plunged into a water-filled excavation pit in Noida’s Sector 150. Mehta was returning home from his office in Gurugram amid dense fog when his vehicle reportedly missed a sharp turn, broke through a low boundary, and fell into the submerged basement of an under-construction site. The case had led to nation-wide outrage.
According to police and eyewitness accounts, Mehta managed to climb onto the roof of his partially submerged car and called his father for help. A rescue operation involving police, firefighters, and state and national disaster response teams could not save him. For nearly 90 minutes, Mehta remained trapped on the sinking vehicle, calling for aid before he ultimately drowned before rescuers could extract him.
Following the death, two separate FIRs were filed. The first, filed on January 18, invoked sections of the new Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita related to culpable homicide and negligence against MZ Wiztown and another firm, Lotus Green Pvt Ltd. A second FIR, registered on January 21, targeted five builders under environmental and water pollution laws. Two other office-bearers of Lotus Green were arrested and later granted bail.