Chasing a kite, losing a son: Delhi's uncovered drain claims another life

The victim's family and some local residents claimed civic negligence and even protested against the alleged inaction on Sunday.

For 75 hours, Avadesh Kumar and Anita Devi waited beside an open drain in Delhi's Jasola, through rain and sun, hunger and thirst, hoping against hope that rescuers would pull out their son Mithun alive.

The teen's body was recovered on Tuesday. (Raj K Raj/HT photo)

The 15-year-old boy fell into the uncovered drain on Saturday morning while trying to retrieve a kite.

At one point, Kumar started clearing through the mounds of waste with his bare hands and tried to dive into the drain to find him.

Their hopes crumbled on Tuesday afternoon, when disaster response forces found his body 500m downstream, caught in a pile of garbage in the drain, below the Shaheen Bagh Metro station.

“We lost our son due to the government’s apathy towards the basic safety and security compromises poor people like us face every day,” said 34-year-old Devi, who works as a domestic help in the neighbourhood.

Mithun, who was in Class 8 in a civic school, is survived by his parents and three siblings, aged eight, 12 and 17.

“The boy could not be traced because the water was flowing rapidly in the drain,” said deputy commissioner of police (southeast) Vineet Kumar.

He said the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) joined the operation around 4pm on Saturday and added that operations continued throughout, except at night.

Claims of delayed rescue efforts

A video clip of Kumar, who cleans sewers for a living, sitting by the drain and ploughing through the garbage with his hands went viral on social media. The reception to that video, said Kumar, forced the Delhi government and civic authorities to take the search seriously.

Kumar said he was ready to jump into the drain.

“I don’t know how to swim, but I was still ready to go into the drain and rescue him. Eight to 10 people, including my relatives and neighbours, were also ready. But the police did not allow it, saying it was risky. They even used force to disperse us when we insisted. My son may have been found earlier, had the rescue teams made serious efforts,” said Kumar.

The family and some local residents even protested against the alleged inaction on Sunday.

A senior police officer, who asked not to be named, said the police and other authorities were present at the rescue site since they were informed about the incident and made their best efforts to retrieve the boy’s body.

“The search and rescue operation was full of challenges. The flow of water made it impossible to remain at one point and find the body. The drain is full of sludge, garbage and pipes that hampered the search. Also, there was no direct way for earthmovers to reach the drain. The machines first created a path for themselves and then went closer to the drain to remove the garbage and finally find the body,” added the officer.

Civic tragedies plague Delhi

Mithun’s death is the latest in a string of similar civic tragedies that have beset Delhi this year, exposing the brittle infrastructure across the city and underlining the complete lack of administrative preparedness.

On Monday, a junior engineer of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) was suspended after chief minister Rekha Gupta expressed “strong displeasure and deep sorrow” over the incident. Gupta on Tuesday announced ₹5 lakh as financial aid for his family.

Mithun wanted to become a computer science engineer, said his parents. The 5’5’’ tall boy was also adept at sketching and painting, they added.

“To fulfil his dreams, we enrolled him at a computer coaching centre. He was a responsible and caring child. The night before he drowned, he brought two packets of chips and persuaded me to eat one of them,” said his mother.

For the family, from Badaun in Uttar Pradesh, the ordeal started around 11am on Saturday. Mithun fell into the drain that flows metres away from their rented single-room accommodation in a packed lane in Jasola village.

His parents were out for work and the three siblings were inside the house.

The family’s home in Jasola village is lined by two drain sluices that flow towards Shaheen Bagh Metro station. The neighbourhood itself is sandwiched between the Okhla sewage treatment plant on the west and the Shaheen Bagh drain on the east. The rickety homes, mostly one or two storeys tall, are stacked in tight rows, with little space between them. In the narrow lanes these houses are built on, layers of trash and waste hide the streets from view. The inescapable smell of sewage rends the air.

A five-year-old boy saw Mithun fall into the drain and alerted the neighbours, who in turn called Mithun’s parents. They rushed to the drain within 15 minutes and informed the police. Then, some officers from the Sarita Vihar police station and two fire tenders arrived and began the search and rescue – a torturous process that stretched over three days that would test the family’s resolve and eventually break it.

In that time, Devi and Kumar ate little. “How could we think about food and water when our son’s life was at stake? I had one samosa in the morning today (Tuesday), and a bowl of rice and daal on Monday. On Sunday also, all my family members survived on samosas that our relatives and neighbours forced us to eat,” said Kumar. The last rites are likely to take place on Wednesday, after the autopsy is completed at the mortuary of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS).

Locals said the drain is choked with garbage, complicating the search.

Victims' families blame ‘open drains’

On Monday, the civic agencies removed garbage from multiple points between the spot where the boy fell and the place where his body was eventually recovered. “The authorities wake up only when any tragedy falls and someone loses their life. There are two drains in our neighbourhood but both are open and do not have even boundary walls. People have drowned in the drain earlier,” said Mohammad Riyaz, a resident. While the National Green Tribunal (NGT) has reiterated that drains are not covered to allow for regular cleaning, desilting and release of toxic gases, there are no specific rules regarding proper barricading or installing grills to prevent people from falling in.

The drain was initially believed to be under the Delhi Jal Board (DJB), but agency officials said that it had been handed over to MCD for maintenance.

MCD officials did not respond to requests for comment.

But the official back-and-forth will do little for Devi, Kumar or their children.

“The government can compensate by at least securing the open drains so that no other families face tragedies like us,” said Devi.

Mithun is among a number of children who have died in Delhi this year after falling into open drains or uncovered pits of water.

On July 9, a seven-year-old boy died after he allegedly fell into a waterlogged vacant plot while defecating in the open at Sanjay Colony in northwest Delhi’s Samaypur Badli. On May 3, a two-year-old girl died after falling into an open drain in north Delhi’s Mukundpur area.