Rudrapur: An eight-year-old boy drowned after allegedly slipping into a nearly 20-ft-deep pond at the under-construction Rajat Jayanti Park in the Nanakmatta area of Udham Singh Nagar district on Sunday evening.
Police said Dev Kumar, a resident of ward No. 7 near Jagdamba Mandir on Dahla Road, had gone out to play near the park, located barely 40 meters from his house, when he allegedly slipped from the stones laid around the pond and fell into the water body.
Family members began searching for him after he did not return home. His mother, Savitri Devi, spotted his body floating in the pond and, in a state of panic, jumped into the water. Residents managed to pull both her and the child out and rushed them to a private hospital, where doctors declared Dev dead.
Upon receiving information, police reached the spot, conducted the inquest proceedings and sent the body for postmortem to Khatima. Further investigation is underway.
Dev was a Class 3 student at a government primary school in Tapeda. His father, Vijay Kumar, who earns a living by hawking nan-khatai biscuits, said he had left for Bareilly earlier in the day and the boy had insisted on accompanying him. “He kept asking me to take him along to Bareilly, but I refused because of the heat. Had I taken him with me, perhaps this accident would not have happened,” he said.
