3 days on, NDRF, SDRF rescuers fail to trace 10-years-old Deepak in drain

The human dummy was found to be trapped in muddy silt in the underground drain at a distance of about 250 metres from the place where the boy reportedly slipped and fell

The joint rescue operation by National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) and State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) failed to trace the whereabouts of a 10-year-old boy, Deepak Kumar, who went missing after accidentally falling into a drain in SK Puri locality of the state capital Saturday afternoon.

A human dummy being dropped into the drain to locate the missing boy, in Patna on Tuesday (Santosh Kumar)

With manual intervention by the rescue team failing to detect the missing boy, they dropped a human dummy in the flowing drain to get the possible direction in which he might have got trapped. “The human dummy was found to be trapped in muddy silt in the underground drain at a distance of about 250 metres from the place where the boy reportedly slipped and fell,” said deputy municipal commissioner, PMC, Vishal Anand.

The underground drain, which connects SK Puri sump house with Rajapur sump house, from where the drain water is pumped into river Ganga, is heavily silted. Suspecting that the boy might have been trapped the slush, Patna municipal corporation workers have begun clearing the drain.

Anand said about 80 metres of the drain has been cleared of silt. “Efforts are on to remove silt and solid waste in another 50 metre stretch of the drain,” he said, adding that rescue operation by NDRF and SDRF personnel was still going on.