3-Year-Old Drowns In Pond In Greater Noida, Weeks After Techie's Death

A three-year-old boy drowned in a pond in Greater Noida, leading villagers to protest civic apathy weeks after a Delhi biker and Noida techie died while awaiting help.

Devansh, along with his parents Anil and Anjali, were attending a feast at a temple near their home in the village within the Greater Noida area. When the parents could not find their son, the family and villagers started searching for him. Some suspected that the child might have gone near the pond.

The police was informed, who arrived with divers at the scene. Hours later, the child's body was taken out of the pond. It is suspected that the child had slipped into the pond while playing.

Villagers said the pond has never been cleaned nor has any boundary been provided around it in decades. Dankaur Police Station in-charge Munendra Singh said the incident is being considered an accident, but the aspect of administrative negligence is also not being ignored.

An employee of a private bank died after falling into a pit on February 6 that had been dug up for a Delhi Jal Board (DJB) project and fenced with green mesh in West Delhi's Janakpuri. 25-year-old Kamal Dhyani's body and his bike were extracted from the four-metre-deep pit the next morning. Eyewitnesses, local residents and workers said safety arrangements such as barricades, safety nets and adequate lighting were missing around the site.

A probe revealed that the sub-contractor, Rajesh Prajapati, was allegedly alerted about the accident hours before police received information about it, but he failed to take any action.

The incident came weeks after the death of 27-year-old software engineer Yuvraj Mehta, who drowned after his car fell into a waterlogged pit near a construction site in Noida's Sector 150 on the intervening night of January 16 and 17. Mehta died while awaiting help for over two hours in the frigid cold and winter fog even as his father stood witness helplessly. His father Rajkumar Mehta claimed the officials and staff arrived at the site without any divers.