6-year-old drowns in South Delhi school

NEW DELHI: A six-year-old boy studying in Class I at Ryan International School in Vasant Kunj was found dead in a water reservoir of the school on Saturday afternoon. Police said the boy had gone missing from his class during the sixth period and his body was later found floating in the tank under the ampitheatre by a school electrician.
Police have registered a case against unknown persons under IPC section 304A for causing death by negligence.Senior officials said the possibility of murder can’t be ruled out at this stage and the matter was being investigated. The Delhi government has ordered a magisterial probe.
The boy, Devansh Kakrora, was participating in a poetry competition on Saturday. “According to his teacher, the boy disappeared all of a sudden around 11.30am,” said a senior police official. “After about 15 minutes, he was found playing near the class and brought back. At 12.20pm, he again went missing. The teachers panicked when he did not turn up after more than half-an-hour. People began looking for him and one of the school’s electricians noticed the door of the underground room open. When he went inside, he found the body of the child floating in it.”
School authorities rushed Devansh to the nearby Indian Spinal Injuries Centre, where the doctors declared him dead. Seeing that the child had died of drowning, the hospital also called up the police.
The child’s parents work as paramedic staff at AIIMS and live in south Delhi’s Sultanpur locality, near Mehrauli. His father, Ramhet Meena, who works in the radiology department of AIIMS, alleged a conspiracy, claiming that someone from the school was behind the incident.
“We got a call around 2.40pm from the hospital. The body was sent for postmortem to AIIMS and his parents were contacted. A case has been registered. Foul play can’t be ruled out at this stage,” said Prem Nath, DCP, south.
The official said a forensic team will be called in once again on Sunday to collect samples from the spot and the area has been cordoned off. It will also be checked who all were on duty and the background of the staff will be ascertained. No injury marks were found on the child’s body but the postmortem report will ascertain the exact cause of death. Students and teachers are being questioned, ” Nath added.
The family said no one from the school was claiming responsibility for the incident. They said they were not even told how the room, that has been built under the amphitheatre and has a water tank in it, was left open.
“The incident, according to the police, took place around 12.30pm but the principal called me around 1.34pm. I was told there is an emergency but they did not give details despite my repeated questioning,” said Meena. “She told me to keep quiet. When I shouted at her, she said it would be better for the family to keep quiet. The principal has also told the media through some TV channels that my child suffered from Attention Deficit Hyper Activity (ADHD) syndrome which is absolutely false. If that was the case, why did they admit the child? And why was he not kept in a special class required for such children?”
Meena said the way to the tank is so narrow that it is impossible for a child to crawl and reach there. “There is something fishy. Why would the child all of a sudden reach the tank? He was a normal child. He had been studying in Ryan for the past three years,” said the father.
Devansh is survived by his father, mother who works in the ENT department of AIIMS, and a three-year-old sister. The principal of the school, Sandhya Sabu, could not be contacted for the school’s version despite several attempts.
The Delhi government has asked the district magistrate, New Delhi, to probe the incident, fix responsibility and ascertain the role of the school management.
Just three days back, another Class I student, a four-yearold boy, died after falling in a septic tank in his school run by the corporation in southwest Delhi’s Kapashera area.