Hamza Kadri was playing with his friends
A 13-year-old boy was electrocuted on August 8 after leaning against an electric pole at a park in his housing society, in Noida’s Sector 82, police said. According to neighbours, the incident took place around 7.30 pm when the boy, Hamza Kadri, was playing with his friends, in Swarnim Vihar housing society. Kadri had been playing for about an hour when he decided to head to his house to fetch some water.
“It was raining lightly that evening. The boy, after getting water, sat down near the pole with his bottle and leaned against it. He received an electric shock and was immediately rushed to the hospital,” said a neighbour.
According to a resident, P K Malhotra, the lights of the pole — located at the centre of the park — had not been working for about a month and had been fixed a couple of days before the incident. “Authority members came and did some work… Since it was late evening, the lights were switched on. It’s shocking… the park is always filled with children in the evenings,” he said.
Noida authority ACEO Rakesh Kumar Mishra said the accident was due to “unfortunate circumstances which were not under the control of the authority, and were not caused by any maintenance lapse by the authority”. “I have received a report from the chief engineer of electricity… The shock was caused because the neutral wire in the system was also carrying electricity, probably because of the rain. The other boys who were playing with the child told us that he had poured water over himself just before the accident…,” Mishra said.
Yogesh Tyagi, the RWA president of the block, claimed that the boy’s parents do not want to take legal action.