AHMEDABAD: A city civil court ordered the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) to pay Rs 1.50 lakh compensation for its negligence, which resulted in the death of a seven-year-old boy, who died after falling into a manhole because AMC employees did not shut its lid. The order for compensation comes some 14 years after the incident.
The episode took place near Shahpur Darwaza on January 19, 2004, when little Jayesh Dantaniya went out to play in the morning. He was not found till the afternoon sending his family into alarm.
A fire brigade team was informed and asked to trace the child. This was because the fire station was just beside the family’s house.
The next day, firemen retrieved the child’s body from a sewer. The postmortem report suggested that he had died of asphyxiation.
One year later, Jayesh’s family filed a suit seeking Rs 1.5 lakh from the civic body for their negligence. They asserted that the manhole had been kept open for nearly a month. When the court asked the civic authorities, an engineer told the court that the road on which the accident took place sees heavy traffic and there was no possibility of the lid being left open.
After hearing the case, the court concluded that there was ample evidence to suggest that the manhole was open.
It is the duty of AMC employees to maintain the gutter line and keep the lid shut.
“Hence, it is proved that the employees of the defendant corporation failed to take proper care and they did not shut the lid of the gutter,” the court said and added that the victim was just a child and cannot be held to be negligent.
The court held the AMC vicariously liable to pay compensation for the negligence of its employees and ordered it to pay Rs 1.50 lakh with 8% interest, saying that the family is entitled to compensation under various heads like future loss of income, loss of love and affection, funeral expenses etc.
