3-year-old dies after falling into open ‘tank’ in Capital

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Prima facie, the cause of death is drowning. But we are waiting for the child’s autopsy report to ascertain the exact cause of death

Gaurav Sharma, additional deputy commissioner of police (Rohini)

NEW DELHI: A three-year-old died after falling into an open ‘tank’ of an under-construction building near his home in outer Delhi’s Sanjay Colony, close to Narela, on Friday morning.

The boy was playing with other children when he went inside the building to hide and accidentally fell into the open ‘tank’ around 11am.

According to police, nobody saw him falling.

Though locals said that it was a septic tank in which the boy fell, the police said that the child fell into an uncovered manhole. Locals told the police that the building’s construction had been halted around six months ago and the tank had been uncovered since then.

Additional deputy commissioner of police (Rohini) Gaurav Sharma said a case of death by negligence under Section 304A of the Indian Penal Code was registered against the building owner.

“Prima facie, the cause of death is drowning. But we are waiting for the child’s autopsy report to ascertain the exact cause of death,” Sharma said.

The boy lived with his parents, who are daily wagers, his sister and his grandfather in a rented house in Sanjay Colony, Narela. The family is from Bihar. The child’s father, Shankar Bhagat, had gone to work when the incident took place.

The boy’s mother Nutan Devi told the police that she gave her son a bath and started cooking lunch when he went out to play. His grandfather, Hari Prakash, was resting on a mat outside the house.

Nutan later went looking for her son but couldn’t find him. She asked her father-in-law and he told her that he had seen him playing with some children.

“When we could not find him, we panicked and alerted our neighbours. They looked for him in the neighbourhood and then went inside the under-construction building. The septic tank was uncovered. The neighbours looked into the tank using a cellphone torch and found his body floating in the water. They pulled him out from the tank,” Prakash said.

A neighbour called the police control room and informed them about the incident.

The three-year-old boy was rushed to a nearby hospital where doctors declared him dead on arrival. “The building owner is on the run after the incident. Our teams are looking for him,” a police officer associated with the case said.