TIRUCHY: Gloom engulfed Thennur after a five-year-old boy who went missing on Wednesday evening was found dead in a sewage canal.
Yaswanth, the son of Premkumar (28), a painter in Annai Sathya Nagar, was playing in the street at around 3.30 pm on Wednesday. His mother, occupied with household work, did not notice Yaswanth's absence. But as dusk fell and he did not return, she grew alarmed, calling for him in vain. Neighbours too searched for the boy in the locality but could not find him.
At around 9 pm, someone thought to check the five-foot-deep canal where the boy was found dead. His body was sent to the Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Government Hospital for post mortem and handed over to his parents on Thursday afternoon.
Locals assembled near the canal on Thursday to mourn the child and vent their ire against the Tiruchy corporation officials. "This would not have happened if the corporation had closed the drainage. Several children can be seen playing near the drainage every day. We are worried about their safety," said Mookaayi, a resident.
Tension prevailed in the area as a group of youngsters tried to block the flow of drainage water. "They have ignored our area for a long time. We cannot tolerate this kind of lethargic attitude from officials. Since we don't want such incidents to happen again we tried to block the flow of water," said a youngster. Meanwhile, some corporation workers, who reached the spot to close the drainage, beat a hasty retreat after seeing the furious residents.
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Amid the furor, Yaswanth’s mother, Nalini (25), remained inside her home, clutching a packet of biscuits she had bought for him. Nalini has three children -- Yeswanth was the eldest. Checking with her neighbour about her second child, she went up to her youngest son, just 30 days old, talking about her first-born.
"I think he went out when he heard the sound of an ice cream vendor. I noticed his absence only in the evening. Then, we started searching for him everywhere but didn’t realise that my child was battling for his life in the open drainage,” she said. “Authorities should ensure that similar incidents never happen again in our area." Her husband, Premkumar, was too grief-stricken to speak.
Corporation Commissioner S Sivasubramaniam told The New Indian Express that the canal was a stormwater drain, not a sewage canal. "Therefore, we have not closed it. I heard there was a weak wooden board over the drainage and the child might have stood on that to pluck a fruit. The city has several such open stormwater drainages. If the incident happened in an open manhole, we can be blamed for that. But, in this kind of stormwater drainage what can we do?" he asked. Instead, the corporation cut down the guava tree in the locality.
Residents pooh-poohed his version. "The guava tree was on private land near the drain. The child didn't fall into the canal while trying to pluck a fruit from the tree," said Prabhakar, a resident. Residents also pointed to the lack of play areas for children in the neighbourhood.