A 27-year-old man drowned in a deep construction pit near Delhi, with an eye-witness alleging that emergency responders refused to enter the water as it was “too cold”, despite the victim crying for help for hours.

The victim, identified as software engineer Yuvraj Mehta, died late on Friday night after his car plunged into a flooded excavation site in Noida, a satellite city east of India’s capital.

According to police and eyewitness accounts, Yuvraj was driving home through Sector 150 of Noida in Uttar Pradesh state shortly after midnight amid dense winter fog when his vehicle struck a low boundary wall and fell into a waterlogged pit around 70ft deep. The site had been excavated a few years ago for a stalled construction project.

Indian media reported that Yuvraj managed to escape his vehicle and stand on its roof as it slowly submerged. As he struggled to stay afloat, he called his father, Raj Kumar Mehta, on his cellphone, pleading for help.

“My son called me and said, ‘Papa, the car has fallen into a drain. I am stuck,’” Mr Mehta told Indian media. “By the time I reached the spot, he was still alive, but no one was able to reach him.”

A passer-by, identified by his first name Moninder, tried to rescue Yuvraj by tying a rope around his own waist and entering the pit after 1am, but said he was unable to locate either the victim or the car in the darkness.

Emergency responders, including the police, arrived at the scene but Moninder alleged they did not enter the water.

“They were saying, ‘The water is too cold. There are iron rods inside. We will not go,’” the Hindustan Times quoted him as saying. He said Yuvraj could be heard crying for help for nearly two hours before falling silent.