4-year-old girl, uncle drown in pit in Noida

NOIDA: A four-year-old girl and her 22-year-old uncle drowned in a pit filled with rainwater where they had gone for a bath on Tuesday morning. The pit, located near the Sector 121 landfill, had been dug by Noida Authority to dump waste but was abandoned in the wake of backlash from local residents. The recent spell of rain had filled the pit.
Villagers of Gadhi Chaukhandi said Ankur, the younger brother of a dairy owner, had carried his niece Nancy on his shoulders to take a bath in the pit around 10.30am. As Ankur waded into the middle of the waterbody, his feet apparently got stuck in the quagmire and he drowned along with Nancy.
Shakeel, another child from the village who, too, had gone for a bath with his brother, saw the two shouting for help and informed others.
“My younger brother and I had also gone to the pit to take a bath. Ankur uncle carried Nancy on the shoulders and walked to the middle. Suddenly, they started to drown and shouted for help,” Shakeel said.
By the time help reached around 11am, Nancy’s body was floating in the water. The villagers started a search for Ankur and informed police. After preliminary search did not yield any result, the cops sought help from the NDRF around 12.30pm. NDRF officers said an 11-member team reached the spot in 30 minutes and started a search. It was only after six hours that the NDRF managed to fish out Ankur’s body. NDRF inspector Arshad Ghazi said it took this long to recover the body because it got stuck in the muck in the bed of the pit. “We could retrieve the body only around 7pm, around 15 metres ahead of the spot where he was believed to have drowned,” he said.
Residents of housing societies around the pit and workers of the Samajwadi Party alleged negligence on the part of the Noida Authority and the state government.
Anil Yadav, a former spokesperson of the SP, said Ankur and Nancy would not have drowned had the Authority bothered to fill the pit after digging and abandoning it. “The state government and Noida Authority are responsible for these deaths. This is the same ground that had been dug up to dump waste. But the Authority had to abandon it following opposition from local residents,” he said.
The SP workers demanded that the family of the deceased be given adequate compensation.