Founder, director booked after kids drown. Not our land: M3M

Gurgaon: The founder of real estate company M3M and its director have been booked in connection with the deaths of six children who drowned in a pit filled with rainwater on a plot in Bajghera on Sunday.
Following a complaint by the family of one of the six kids, an FIR was lodged under IPC sections 304 part 2 (whoever causes the death of any person by doing any rash or negligent act not amounting to culpable homicide) against Basant Bansal, the founder-chairperson of M3M India, and its director Roop Bansal at Bejghera police station.
While police were not forthcoming on details of the project site, they were checking papers related to it, M3M denied owning the plot, which has been without a perimeter wall for almost a year.
On Sunday afternoon, six boys drowned in the pit after they had gone for a swim on the plot. Their bodies were recovered after a three-hour search.
“We are scanning documents related to the site. No arrests have been made yet,” said Deepak Saharan, DCP (west).
In a statement denying ownership of the plot, M3M said, “We are extremely shocked about the unfortunate incident that happened at Sector 111, where due to heavy rains and clogging of water, six young children drowned and lost their lives. Our deep condolences to the families of these children. We would also like to clarify that M3M India is not in possession of the said land and is not linked in any way with the incident in the FIR against Basant Bansal, founder chairman, M3M India and Roop Bansal, director, M3M India. The FIR is being defied.”
Locals in Bajghera asked why a plot that had been excavated and was prone to waterlogging was not fenced off. “It is because of the negligence of the owners of the plot that our kids had to die like this. They dug the pit for a project, but did not bother to build a wall or even a fence around it. We want justice,” said Bajrang Prasad.
Sources in the town and country planning department said there were no provisions for barricading or deployment of guards around vacant construction sites to keep trespassers at bay. Real estate projects usually have a perimeter scaffolding while construction is on or trenches are dug for the foundations. But on vacant plots, the discretion of doing so is the owner’s.
The land, according to the sources, is the site for a luxury residential project. It measures around five acres.
Deputy commissioner Nishant Yadav said he was working on a mechanism to keep such sites out of bounds for trespassers and sought information from people on any other pits filled with rainwater in the vicinity. “We will take the GMDA’s help to drain out rainwater from pits that are filled to the brim. We will use pumps for that,” Yadav said. The Sector 111 plot was drained on Monday, using tractor-mounted pumps.
He added that once construction sites in the vicinity were identified, their owners would be asked to either construct a wall or set up barricades around them.
The deaths of the kids have sparked a debate on who should be held accountable for such incidents and whether the owners of such sites should be mandatorily asked to fence them.