Chennai:
A class four student died in the swimming pool of a well-known school in Chennai during practice. The police have arrested five people including the Physical Trainer of the school.
According to the city police, nine-year-old Ranjan reportedly suffered nausea after he completed his second lap in the four feet deep swimming pool of the Padma Seshadri Bala Bhavan at K K Nagar in Chennai. He was seen climbing up the ladder to come out but slipped into water.
There were twenty five other children in the pool but none seem to have noticed him. Though swimming coaches found him unconscious and took him to hospital, it was too late. Hospital authorities declared "the nine-year-old was brought dead".
The school had outsourced coaching to a private agency which had deployed four coaches. But none of them, the Deputy Commissioner of Police told NDTV, "were in the water but were standing around the pool". He added "they should have been alert and watchful in the water. We have arrested all four coaches and the school's physical trainer and have registered a case of causing death by negligence".
Recently the Correspondent of Zion Matriculation School on the outskirts of Chennai was arrested among others after a six-year-old girl died slipping through a hole on the floor of the school bus. In another case, the Chairman of Jeppiaar Institute of Technology and a few others were put behind bars after ten migrant workers died in a wall collapse at the engineering college.
PMK Chief Ramadoss has demanded the arrest of the Correspondent of the school. He says "it only shows how schools that collect lakhs of rupees as fees and fleece in the name of swimming classes, do not pay any attention to safety. All such unauthorised swimming pools in private schools ought to be shut".
Already the social media is abuzz with tough questions to the police on why the Correspondent of the popular school has been spared. However, the police claim it's a clear case of dereliction of duty by the coaches and the concerned PT.