VELLORE: The 14-year-old girl Priyanka, who fell into an open drain near Christian Medical College (CMC) Hospital on Monday night, was laid to rest in a cemetery at Tollgate in Vellore on Thursday.
The 60-hour search for the girl’s body that commenced around 7 pm on Monday ended around 7.30 am on Thursday.
Priyanka had fallen into the drain when she was returning to the lodge at Berit Subramaniya Swami Koil Street. Though her cousin Amit Soran had tried to rescue her, she was pulled into the drain after being trapped in a whirlpool.
The girl had come to Vellore along with her parents for the treatment of her younger sister Neha. “We never thought that we will lose her in such a way. The carelessness of the local body is the reason for the death. We need justice that will ensure that such incidents do not happen to anyone in the future,” Soran, a lecturer in a government college in Jharkhand, told Express.
Kumar, a contract labourer of the Vellore Corporation, spotted the hand of the dead girl amidst a heap of waste stagnating in the discharge point of the drainage channel in the Palar riverbed, around 4 km from the spot she had fallen.
Following this, he immediately alerted the officials concerned. Kumar and few others of the rescue team recovered the Priyanka’s body around 7.20 am.
In the meantime, the girl’s father Indrajeet Mukherjee and Amit Soran of Makatpur in Giridih district of Jharkhand were informed about the recovery of the body, ending their ordeal for more than two days.
The body was handed over to her family after an autopsy at the Government Vellore Medical College Hospital. It was taken to the CMC Hospital and later to the cemetery at Tollgate for burial. The body was laid to rest around 1 pm after a mass.
Collector R Nanthagopal, Mayor P Karthiyayini, Corporation Commissioner Janaki Raveendran and scores of government employees and locals attended the funeral.