NEW DELHI: A four-year-old boy fell into an open sewer manhole at a park in outer Delhi's Ranhola on Tuesday afternoon. A multi-agency search and rescue operation was still under way more than 20 hours later, with the child not yet traced.
The Ranhola police station received a call at about 3.21 pm on Tuesday, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Outer) Vikram Singh said. A team reached the spot near Kheri Baba Pul, along the Ganda Nala drain, where a sewer line runs beside the service road.
The boy, a resident of Som Bazar Wali Gali in Mohan Garden, had been brought to Das Garden Park by his mother and fell into the manhole while moving towards the drain, the DCP said.
Teams of the Delhi Fire Services, the National Disaster Response Force and the local administration joined the operation. "The boy has not been found or recovered from the sewer so far. Further efforts are being made by the rescue team and NDRF to locate and extract the child from the drain," DCP Singh said.
A case of causing death by negligence has been registered under Section 106 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita at the Ranhola police station, and an investigation has been opened to establish the sequence of events and fix responsibility.
The boy's parents and relatives remained at the spot. His father told reporters that his son had come to the park to play with another boy. "The rescue teams are telling us that they will find my son. We are poor people; what can we say now," he said.
(With inputs from PTI and media reports)