A nearly 24-hour search for a four-year-old boy who fell into an open sewer in Delhi's Baprola area ended in tragedy on Wednesday, with rescue teams recovering his dismembered body from a water treatment plant in Nilothi.
Police said DNA profiling would be conducted to establish the identity of the remains.
Investigators suspect the child's body was dismembered by large rotating machines used to filter and treat wastewater at the sewage treatment plant.
The boy fell into an open manhole near Kheri Baba Pul in Nangli Vihar Extension on Tuesday afternoon. An extensive search operation involving the Delhi Police, fire brigade, local divers and the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) was launched soon after.
Rescue teams traced the sewer and adjoining drain network before reaching the Water Treatment Plant in Nilothi, Nihal Vihar, where the body was found in multiple parts.
The remains were retrieved and sent to Sanjay Gandhi Memorial Hospital for preservation and post-mortem examination.
An FIR under Section 106(1) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), pertaining to causing death by negligence, has been registered against unidentified persons, police said. Further investigation is underway.
According to police, the Ranhola police station in outer Delhi received information about the incident at around 3.21 pm on November 10.
The child had accompanied his mother to Dass Garden Park and was walking towards a drain to relieve himself when he accidentally fell into the manhole.
Rescue teams searched the sewer and adjoining drain for nearly seven hours on Tuesday but failed to locate the child. Poor visibility and difficult conditions forced them to suspend the operation for the night. The search resumed on Wednesday.
Police said the operation was particularly challenging as the sewer was connected to the drain, making it difficult to trace the child's movement through the network.
Meanwhile, local residents who had gathered at the site to support the family expressed grief over the discovery and raised concerns about uncovered manholes in residential areas.
In a statement, a Delhi government official said the Delhi Jal Board (DJB) received telephonic information about the incident at 5.22 pm on Tuesday from the area's executive engineer (maintenance).
DJB personnel rushed to the spot and found that police and NDRF teams had already begun rescue operations, the statement said.
During an inspection, officials found that the interceptor sewer line passed beneath the closed boundary wall of the Najafgarh drain, which falls under the jurisdiction of the Irrigation and Flood Control Department.
The DJB also said the sewer manhole cover had reportedly been damaged by miscreants. Entry into the stretch had already been prohibited by police in connection with another unlawful incident in the area, and access was restricted without prior authorisation.
Officials said a detailed report on the incident would be submitted separately.
(With inputs from PTI)