Mumbai rains: Infant slips out of mother’s arms while crossing drain, missing

KALYAN: A six-month-old infant girl drowned after she slipped out of her guardian’s arms and fell into an overflowing dirty canal flowing beneath railway tracks between Thakurli and Kalyan train stations in Maharashtra on Wednesday.

The search operation launched by the railway police and local municipal authorities soon after the accident failed to locate the infant until Wednesday evening.

The incident happened around 2.55 pm on Wednesday between Thakurli and Kalyan stations when it was raining heavily in the area.

The woman, identified as Yogita Rumal, 30, left home from Mumbai around 7 am in an Ambernath-bound local train with her daughter, Hrishita, and a male companion.

The local train, however, stopped between Thakurli and Kalyan stations because of the rain.

The passengers including the family were stranded for over two hours in the train.

A video of the accident, clicked by a local man, showed that after waiting for long, many stranded commuters began to cross the overflowing drain by walking over a narrow line of pipes.

Rumal attempted to do the same but as she tried to walk over the slippery pipes, the infant slipped out of her hand. The man made a futile attempt to catch her but could not prevent her from falling into the water and disappearing within seconds.

A couple of people in the vicinity jumped into the water but failed to locate the infant.