Boy’s body fished out of Gomti after 20 hours
Nine-year-old boy's body fished out of Gomti river after falling in due to broken railing; family alleges delay in rescue operation led to his death.
The body of a nine-year-old boy, who fell into the Gomti through a broken side railing at the riverfront near Lakshman Mela ground, on Tuesday afternoon, was fished out by the State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) team after 20 hours of a marathon search on Wednesday.
Raj Sonkar had fallen into the river while he was playing at the Lakshman Mela ground and his mother Parvati was washing clothes nearby at around 3pm on Tuesday. The boy was the eldest among three children of Parvati and her husband, Santosh Sonkar, who is a rickshaw puller. The family lives in a slum settlement near the Lakshman Mela ground.
The family members of the boy, however, have alleged that the SDRF team arrived at the spot nearly an hour after the4 incident and this delay in initiating rescue operations led to the boy’s death. The family even staged a demonstration on Wednesday, demanding action against those responsible for the delay. The agitation was called off after several assurances by authorities of the district administration to enquire into the matter and take stern action.
It is not the first incident when people had slipped through the broken railing at the stretch on the riverfront and drowned. On December 20, last year, a car ferrying four passengers had skidded off into the Gomti River near the riverfront on the stretch opposite Paper Mill colony, under Mahanagar police station limits. In the incident, two people including a woman and her male staff member of a beauty salon along with their pet dog had drowned and their bodies were recovered after several hours.
