Two lifeguards, who were responsible for security at the Government school pool where a 13-year-old boy drowned while learning to swim on Friday in East Delhi’s Farsh Bazar area, have been arrested by the police. Police had on Saturday registered a case under Section 304(A) (causing death due to negligence) against the two lifeguards — Bhaskar Kaushik and Jai Singh — and they were arrested on Sunday.
Mukul Sharma, a Class VIII student of DAV Public School in Dayanand Vihar, had gone to Delhi Government-run Babu Ram School to learn swimming along with his cousin Vikas on Friday evening and drowned.
Mukul, the only child of his parents, lived in Vishwas Nagar area with his family and had joined the swimming classes two days ago. According to police, Vikas had decided to sit beside the pool seeing it crowded but Sharma went into it. “Around 30 minutes later, other swimmers brought him out of the pool. He was rushed to GTB Hospital where he was declared brought dead. He apparently died due to drowning. The body has been sent for post-mortem, which would establish the exact cause of death,” said a senior police official.
Vikas has also alleged that the tutor was sitting at a corner while children were playing inside the pool. Meanwhile, Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia has ordered inspection of all swimming pools in the national Capital after this incident. “Inspect each and every swimming pool in Delhi,” Sisodia said, adding the direction applied to both Government and non-Government swimming pools.
The Deputy Chief Minister, in a tweet, said the District Magistrate and Sub-Divisional Magistrate of the area would carry out the inspection work.