Boy (8) goes to fetch ball from open bldg site opp home, drowns in ‘15ft deep’ pit | Mumbai News

Mumbai: An eight-year-old boy died after falling into a pit filled with water at an unbarricaded construction site in Malad East on Thursday night. He had gone to the site across the road from his home to retrieve a ball he was playing with after dinner. The body was discovered by his father, who had been desperately looking for him, around seven hours later. Locals said the pit was around 15ft deep.Kurar police lodged an FIR against the site engineer and the contractor for negligence under provisions of Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita. The site is being developed by Mauli Construction. The child, Divyansh Rajesh Mourya, a Class 3 student of a civic-run school, lived with his parents and younger sister in a slum in Malad’s Ambewadi. He stepped out after dinner around 8pm to play nearby, said his uncle, Ram Ishwar Mourya. “When he failed to return, everyone started panicking and went out looking for him. No one could trace him. However, his father didn’t give up and kept looking for him. Around 3am, his father decided to check the construction site and saw the open pit, in which the boy was floating.” A neighbour, Aaditya Nishad, said Divyansh was rushed to a private hospital in the vicinity, where doctors declared him dead. His desperate family then took him to civic-run Shatabdi Hospital in Kandivli. The neighbour said when locals gathered at the construction site, they found that the pit was around 15ft deep. “The boy would have surely drowned after falling into such a deep pit. There were CCTV cameras at the construction site and police have already collected the footage. The footage will clearly establish that it was due to the lack of safety measures at the site that the boy fell into the pit and died.” A police officer said CCTV cameras installed at the site captured Divyansh entering the compound, adding that appropriate action will be taken against those responsible. “The pit is filled with drainage water flowing in from an SRA project upstream.” When TOI visited the spot, the child’s final rites were yet to be carried out as his body had been sent for a postmortem examination. Locals called for stringent action against the developer for not taking adequate safety measures at the site by barricading it. Former Malad corporator Vinod Mishra from BJP demanded that civic authorities who have to keep tabs on whether developers are taking adequate precautions at their sites must also be held accountable. Divyansh’s father runs a grocery shop opposite Kurar Metro station and his mother is a homemaker. (With inputs by Nitasha Natu)