5-yr-old playing near home slips into flooded pit, dies

Noida: A five-year-old boy playing outside his home in Preet Vihar Colony in Greater Noida allegedly slipped into a water-filled pit and drowned on Wednesday afternoon.According to police, Dev, a nursery student at a school in nearby Chapraula village, had returned home around 1pm and went out to play near his house."Around 1.30 pm, he fell into the pit—a farmland where wastewater from the colony collects—located at a short distance from his residence," a senior officer said.While the depth of the pit was not immediately clear, police said the child could not come out of it on his own. Neighbours and passersby pulled the boy out of the water. Dev was immediately taken to a nearby hospital, but doctors could not revive him, the victim's father Umesh Kumar said.Authorities confirmed the field on which the wastewater from the colony accumulated belonged to a local farmer. No formal complaint has been filed by the family regarding the incident, police said.On Feb 27, a four-year-old boy drowned after he slipped into the Ganga canal while playing outside his home with his siblings in Dankaur. His body was recovered about 120km downstream in Mathura after six days. Police had then found that the canal that ran along an unpaved road near the child's house had no wall, railing or fencing.Earlier, on Jan 16 night, a software engineer driving home to Tata Eureka Park in Sector 150 in his Grand Vitara fell into a deep pit at an under-construction commercial site and drowned. Yuvraj Mehta was negotiating a sharp turn near ATS Le Grandiose when his SUV smashed through a damaged boundary wall and fell into the trench, apparently dug for a double basement. The site also had no barricades, reflectors or warning signs.A survey by TOI in the days following Mehta's death found several such excavations along or near busy roads in sectors 32, 85, 150 and 154. Many featured steep drops, dense vegetation or exposed columns with iron rods jutting out, but lacked even basic safety measures such as barricades, warning signs or reflective markers.