4-year-old running home falls into open drain in Loni, dies

Noida: A four-year-old girl running into her house after a game with her friends slipped into an open drain in Loni area and died on Friday night. The accident happened in Laxmi Garden colony, where a 10ft deep and 6ft wide drain runs across the area with a row of houses and shops lining it.
The girl has been identified as Zehnal. Her father Rizwan (29) is a rickshaw-puller and the family has been staying in a rented accommodation in the colony for the past two years.

Shailendra Pratap Singh, SHO of Loni Border police station, said the accident happened around 6pm when Zehnal was returning home after playing with her friends.

“The people of the area have to cross the drain to enter or exit their houses. As there is no bridge, the residents have placed wooden or concrete slabs across the drain. The girl was running to her house when she slipped and fell,” Singh said.

“A police team pulled out the girl’s body after over an hour with help from fire department personnel. Her body was found 100 metres away from the spot where she had slipped in. Police took her nearby hospital, where doctors declared her dead on arrival,” Singh said.

Friday’s accident bears stark resemblance with the death of a 26-year-old man who drowned in a drain in Indirapuram last week. Amit Kumar, a tailor in Delhi, too was trying to cross the drain by walking on a wooden slab placed over it when he slipped. By the time he was fished out after an hour, he had died.

The body of Zehnal, too, was fished out after almost an hour. The police said the search was delayed as the drain was full of muck and the cops had to remove one by one the concrete and wooden slabs that residents had placed.

“The girl’s family refused to file a police complaint and did not even want to get an autopsy done. Police tried to persuade them for a post-mortem, but they declined saying they did not want any cuts on the body,” the officer said.

None of Zehnal’s family members was willing to talk to the media. Keshav Raj, who sells vegetables in the neighbourhood, said Rizwan has two sons apart from Zehnal. “Rizwan loved her daughter very much. Since he is not literate, he wanted his daughter to get the best education possible. The family is in shock,” he said.