Ghaziabad: Three more people, two of them minors, died in rain-related incidents in the city on Thursday as the city’s civic infrastructure collapsed following the season’s first bout of heavy rain, taking the toll to five. Earlier, a three-year-old girl drowned in a rainwater-filled lane in Sarvodaya Nagar, and a guard was electrocuted in Indirapuram.On Friday, the body of a six-year-old boy was recovered from a rainwater-filled pit at a slum in Ankur Vihar area. The child allegedly slipped into the pit while playing on Thursday evening. In Masuri, another minor drowned after he fell into an excavated plot filled with rainwater. In Modinagar, a labourer died, and another was injured after the wall of an under-construction building collapsed on them while they were sleeping.According to police, Polu, a resident of a slum settlement near Milk village in Ankur Vihar, went missing around 7 pm on Thursday. His father Satish, a garbage collector, said the boy went out to play with other children. When he did not return till late evening, the family members and neighbours searched for him through the night. His body was recovered from a rainwater-filled pit on Friday morning.“We kept looking for him, hoping he would return. But in the morning, the local residents told us that my son’s body was lying in the water here,” Satish said.Ankur Vihar station house officer (SHO) Yogendra Singh said police were alerted around 9 am. No complaint has been filed by the family and the autopsy report is awaited. “It seems the child went out to play but slipped into the vacant plot where water collected after intense morning showers,” Singh said, adding that the death appeared to be an accidental drowning.
Eight-year-old boy slipped into a rainwater-filled plot in Mohinuddinpur Dhabarsi village while playing
In Masuri, the eight-year-old boy Shad, a class 3 student at a private school, drowned on Thursday evening after slipping into a water-filled plot in Mohinuddinpur Dhabarsi village while playing with other children. Residents said the area’s main drain had been overflowing after heavy rain and had gone uncleaned amid encroachment, causing the overflow to collect in nearby vacant plots.Shad’s father Shadab said the boy was playing outside with his friends when he slipped into the flooded plot. “The children raised an alarm, and immediately we reached the spot and pulled out Shad. We rushed him to a hospital but he succumbed during treatment,” he said.Villagers said the death could have been prevented had authorities cleared encroachments on drains and ponds and maintained the drainage network, which they said causes waterlogging every monsoon. Masuri SHO Harendra Malik said no complaint had been filed and the family declined an autopsy.In Modinagar, a labourer Ranjeet Rai (50) of Chhapra district in Bihar, who was employed at Kanan Greens Society on Delhi-Meerut Road, died after the society’s boundary wall collapsed onto the hut he had built against it late on Thursday night. Neighbours pulled him from the debris and rushed him to a nearby hospital, where he was declared dead. Ankit Kumar, station house officer at Niwadi, said no complaint had been received and that the wall appeared to have collapsed under the weight of the rain.Residents across the city have blamed the civic body for failing to prepare for the monsoon, pointing to clogged and encroached drains across multiple neighbourhoods that turned streets, pits and construction plots into deadly hazards within a single day of rain.
