Missing boy’s body found in SWD after six days

BENGALURU: Six days after a five-year-old boy went missing and was suspected to have accidentally fallen into a storm water drain (SWD), his body was fished out of a drain near Global Village tech park in Rajarajeshwari Nagar, on Wednesday noon.

Zain Shariff, a resident of Arafath Nagar in Goripalya in Bengaluru West, had gone missing on August 29 night. Police said that the boy had gone with a neighbouring girl to dump garbage into the SWD near their house at around 10 pm. When he did not return home, his mother asked the children who were playing outside for the boy, but he could not be traced. The next day, during prayer’s at mosques the missing boy’s information was announced, yet he could not be traced. After efforts to find him went in vain, the mother, Gulshan, approached the JJ Nagar police on Sunday and filed a missing person’s complaint.

“We got to know from a CCTV footage that the boy was last seen with the girl. On being inquired, she revealed that Zain accidentally slipped into the drain when they had gone to dump the garbage. She did not tell anyone about the incident as she was scared she would be scolded. Based on her statement, we launched a search operation for the boy in the drain, with the help of fire department’s rescue team and the BBMP staff,” the police added.

During the search operation, which began on Monday morning, the teams covered more than 10 kilometers around the spot, where the boy had accidentally fallen. “On Wednesday, the rescue team found the body of the missing boy in the drain near Global Village Tech Park in Rajarajeshwari Nagar,” the police added.

Zain was the eldest son of Gulshan, who had lost her husband one-and-a-half-years ago. Besides Zain, the couple has two other children. “The local residents have been dumping garbage in the drain for years and this has now proved to be fatal for the boy. We will ask the BBMP to take measures to avert such incidents in future,” the police added.