Safar Ahmad Ilford, aged 30, succumbed to burns at the Burns’ Unit of Victoria Hospital, Candos late on Thursday afternoon, May 23. The Plaine-Lauzun resident received an electric shock in the morning while cutting Central Electricity Board (CEB) power cables on a high-voltage line at the foot of Signals Mountain. Safar Ilford, who was badly burned, breathed his last at around 6pm.
An alarm system in the CEB control room in Curepipe alerted the organization to a fire on the high-voltage line at the foot of Signal Mountain. A team of CEB technicians was dispatched to the site. It was at this precise moment that they saw the high-voltage line on fire and an agonizing man lying on the ground with severe burns. Elements of the Mauritius Fire and Rescue Service were called to the scene to contain the fire, before an ambulance from the Service d’Aide Médicale d’Urgence took the injured man to the Dr A.G. Jeetoo Hospital, Port-Louis.
After receiving first aid, the 30-year-old was transferred to the Burns’ Unit at Candos Hospital, where he was placed in an intensive care ward. His condition was considered serious. Investigators from the Pailles police station and the Criminal Investigation Division (CID) of the Metropolitan Police’s Southern Division attended the scene of the fire.
At the scene of the fire, they found a saw with which the victim had been cutting electrical cables. The CID’s theory was that Safar Ilford had come to steal the cables. An autopsy will be performed on his body on Thursday morning, May 24, at the Candos hospital morgue.
An investigation has been launched to shed light on the exact circumstances of this tragedy.
