Chennai: A 17-year-old college student was electrocuted after stepping on a live power cable that had snapped and was lying on the ground at a grove near Vallappakkam in Walajabad in the Kancheepuram district on Sunday. The student had gone to the grove with three friends to collect firewood, police said.According to the Walajabad police, the deceased boy was a first-year B.Com student at a private college in Pallavaram. On Sunday afternoon, the boy and his friends were cutting firewood at the grove along the Kancheepuram-Chengalpattu bypass road when he reportedly stepped on the live wire without noticing it. He suffered a severe electric shock, was thrown away and died on the spot.On information from his friends, the police reached the spot and sent the body to the Kancheepuram district government hospital for postmortem. Meanwhile, residents accused Tamil Nadu Power Distribution Corporation (TNPDCL) officials of negligence for failing to remove the snapped power cable. More than hundred people from Vallappakkam gathered outside the Walajabad electricity office and staged a protest before blocking the Walajabad-Tambaram Highway for about an hour, disrupting traffic.Senior police officials held talks with the protesters and assured them that appropriate action would be taken, following which they withdrew the protest. Due to the protest, traffic in the area was disrupted for a while.