When a Child Died in an Open Drain, the City Looked Away

In another sobering reminder of how ephemeral life can be in our city, a five-year-old boy, Sunit Kumar, met with his untimely demise after he fell into an open, under-construction drain near Vivekananda School in Guwahati's Kalapahar locality on Wednesday afternoon.

The tragedy took place at around 3 PM, when the boy slid playfully into the gaping drain found along a roadside stretch left dangerously uncovered in the course of prevailing construction activities.

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It was only at 6 PM that residents, assisted by city police officials, were able to pull his body out. By then, Gauhati Medical College and Hospital (GMCH) doctors could only pronounce him dead. The most appalling aspect of this incident is not only the civic authorities' negligence in leaving open a large death trap in the middle of a residential area. It is also the appalling indifference of ordinary people. 

CCTV footage of the place shows that while the child slipped and disappeared into the drain, two people walking by just in front of it were noticed. They did not respond, did not sound the alarm, did not even look in the direction of the drain.

Was it helplessness? Was it indifference? Or has society become so desensitised to calamities happening around us that a kid drowning in the open daylight provokes no reaction? Yes, some would call it fate. 

But fate alone does not account for the fact that the drain had been left uncovered to begin with. Fate does not excuse the failure of civic authorities to maintain safety measures in public works. 

And fate by no means excuses the witnesses who stood idly by and walked away while a life could have possibly been saved with a timely shout for assistance. Little Sunit Kumar's death is no mere statistic of urban indifference; it is a mirror held to our collective conscience.

Open drains, half-excavated pits, and unfinished infrastructure have become silent killers in our cities. Year after year, we see such tragedies, and yet no accountability is ever caught up with the guilty. It is time we ceased blaming fate and began blaming responsibility — of contractors who leave things hazardous unattended, of civic authorities who turn a blind eye, and of ourselves, the citizens, who prefer to remain silent more often than not.

A child is dead. The city has to answer.

Meanwhile, the child’s body has been kept at GMCH for post-mortem examination. 

Inputs- Rittik Koushik (Senior Journalist, Pratidin Time)

Also Read: BREAKING: Another Death at GMCH, Family Alleges Negligence by Doctors