MUMBAI: A seven-year-old boy drowned after falling into a lift shaft filled with rain water at an under-construction site in Andheri West late on Friday.
Police said the child and his parents were attending a wedding ceremony that a worker had organised on the ground floor of the site. The DN Nagar police registered a case of negligence against the supervisor. No arrest has been made.
The building is located at Patkar Compound in Gilbert Hill area. Construction had come to a halt at the site about three or four years ago. The site is manned by security guards, while labourers live close by. Police said one of the labourers decided to organise his wedding ceremony on the ground floor without permission, as he thought nobody would find out or object.
“The victim, Rajik Khan, was playing at the site. He is suspected to have ventured to the lift shaft and may have slipped inside. The water level was about five feet high. As the labourers had put on music, nobody heard him fall. Someone spotted a slipper floating in the lift shaft and summoned Rajik’s parents,” a police official said. The boy was fished out and taken to hospital, where doctors pronounced him dead.
“We have booked the site supervisor under section 304 (A) of IPC as he failed to take adequate precautions. The labourer who organised a wedding ceremony at the building will also be probed,” a police officer said.
A few months ago, another child from the nearby slum had drowned in a pit dug in the same building compound.
