A resident of Kendua village under the Sadar police station in Keonjhar district was electrocuted on his wedding day on Thursday.
The deceased, identified as Lokanath Mohanty, reportedly came in contact with a live electric wire when he was switching off the decoration lights.
He was rescued and rushed to the District Headquarters Hospital, where doctor declared him dead.
A pall of gloom descended on the village after the tragic incident.
In another incident, a tribal girl named Nandini Kadraka, studying in Class-VII in the Kastuba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya (KGVB) at Kumudabali of Muniguda in Rayagada district, died after coming in contact with an electric wire hanging on the wall while she was returning to the hostel after
having dinner.
Her hostel inmates rescued her and the hostel authorities got her admitted to the Muniguda CHC where she was declared dead by the doctor.
Nandini’s father blamed the school authorities’ negligence for the incident and said he was waiting for the postmortem report after which he would take necessary steps against them.
Heavily funded by the Central Government, the school, which was established in 2008, is four km from the block headquarters and 64 km from the district headquarters.
A residential Upper Primary School it has 130 inmates. Recently, a tender was issued by the school headmistress for procurement of electrical equipments worth lakhs of rupees along with other materials.
In spite of this, the lackadaisical attitude of the school authorities in keeping the repairs of electrical equipments pending is a matter of concern, said RTI activist Rabindra Patakhandal.
It was also alleged that the hostel superintendent does not stay in the hostel campus. Though the school was established a decade back, the monitoring system is extremely weak. The District Education Officer visited the spot and inquired into the incident and said the guilty would be taken to task.