CHENNAI: A seven-year-old boy, Teja Gupta, drowned at the Greater Chennai Corporation-run swimming pool in Periamet on Tuesday evening. The city police booked two swimming instructors and a pool supervisor and are conducting investigations.
According to Periamet police, Teja Gupta of Kosapet near Purasawalkam joined the swimming class 10 days ago. On Tuesday evening, Teja accompanied by his grandfather had come to the My Lady Swimming Pool for his lessons. "Every day he used to take swimming lessons between 5 pm and 6 pm. On Tuesday, during the lessons he started going under and on noticing this, one of the instructors jumped into the pool and pulled Teja out," said a police officer.
He was rushed to the Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital, where the doctors declared him brought dead. His body was then sent for postmortem. On information, Periamet police registered a case.
"Initially, a case was filed under section 174 (suspicious death) of the CrPC but on Wednesday, the case was altered to death by negligence," the police officer said.
The case was booked against the swimming instructors Senthil and Suman and the pool supervisor Prem Kumar, the police added. When contacted, a senior corporation official said CCTV footage would be checked to determine how the accident occurred.
Officials have also asked the contractor to pull out the registration records of the boy's classes to check if they complied with the Tamil Nadu Urban Local Bodies (Regulation and Monitoring of Swimming Pools) Rules, 2015. The rules state that persons below 8 years of age and of height less than 121.6 cm shall not be allowed in the pool if not under parental supervision.
"We are checking if the boy was enrolled by his parents and if a parent was available at the pool when the incident took place. We are also checking to see if other safety measures were followed. Action will be taken after the inquiry," an official said.