Three-year-old boy in Ghaziabad drowns in open drain

After accidently falling into an open drain while playing, a three-year-old boy in Ghaziabad drowned to death.

A three-year-old boy drowned to death after falling into an open drain at Behrampur in Vijay Nagar on Saturday afternoon.

Residents point to the open drain where 3-year-old Sunny drowned at Behrampur on Saturday, in Ghaziabad. (Sakib Ali /Hindustan Times)

Two residents of the area found the boy’s body after searching the 20-foot stretch of the non-cemented drain.

According to the boy’s family, three-year-old Sunny, the elder among two brothers, had rushed out of the house to play while his mother, Sita, was feeding his two-year-old brother, Bobby. The family said they had been living in the locality for the past 15 years and the child’s father Dharmendra Kumar is a parking lot caretaker at the Hanuman Temple complex in Delhi’s Connaught Place.

The boy’s father said, “His mother had caught hold of him two-three times for lunch when he tried to slip away. After serving him food, she went to feed his brother, and Sunny ran out of the house. After a while when she could not find him, she searched the locality for him. Only after five-six hours did our neighbours think of the open drain.”

He said that the boy’s grandmother who generally took care of the boy had gone to the market at the time of the incident.

“Around 6pm, two residents of the area recovered the body of my son. They also called up police. The body was handed over to us on Sunday after postmortem. The 4ftx4ft drain is next to my house, and probably my son slipped in while playing,” he said.