A four-year-old girl died after she accidentally fell into a 20 feet deep septic tank on the premises of a private school in Northwest Delhi’s Swaroop Nagar area on Tuesday afternoon.
Nandini, a nursery student of Camp Convent Public School, was returning home with her mother and two other siblings around 2.30 pm when she fell into open septic tank in a vacant plot jointly owned by Sant Sujan Singh International School and the Sardar Colony Gurudwara.
Nandini’s father Ranjit Singh, an auto-rickshaw driver, said, “It was around 4 pm, I was in Peeragarhi when I got to know that my daughter fell into a septic tank on the premises of the school. Sant Sujan School falls in the way of our house and Nandini’s School. She was running when she accidentally fell into the 20 feet deep and 7 feet in width tank. My wife who went after her too fell into the tank. However, locals managed to rescue my wife.”
“It was only hours later that the local divers in by the police could fish out my daughter,” added Singh.
She was rushed to Max Hospital, Salimar Bagh but was declared dead on arrival.
Sanju Devi, Nandini’s mother, shared how she felt helpless when her daughter fell into the septic tank. “I was carrying Nandini’s younger brother, 10 months old in my arms and was holding Nandini’s hand. Within minutes, this happened. As a mother, my first instinct was to jump into it. I did but the water was full of muck that I could not do anything.”
After the incident, Sant Sujan School was locked. Angry parents and locals gathered outside the school and staged protest against the school authorities.
Police said that they have registered a case under Section 336 (Act endangering life or personal safety of others) and 304A (causing death due to negligence) of the IPC at the Swaroop Nagar police station.
In a similar incident, highlighting laxity on the part of schools, in January last year, a six-year-old student of Ryan International School in Vasant Kunj area of South Delhi died after his body was found floating in a water storage tank on the school premises, hours after he went missing from his classroom. Although the Delhi Police had registered a case against the School Principal and four employees of the school, they all were later released on bail.