13-year-old boy drowns in school swimming pool

A 13-year-old boy died after drowning in the swimming pool at a government-run school in east Delhi’s Farsh Bazar area on Friday evening. The life guards present at the swimming pool were later booked for alleged negligence causing the boy’s death, police said.

According to the police, the deceased, Mukul Kumar, was a class 8 student at the DAV school in Dayanand Vihar. He lived with his parents at northeast Delhi’s Vishwas Nagar area and had joined swimming classes at the Babu Ram Senior Secondary School at Farsh Bazar, which is not very far away from his residence.

Mukul was a beginner who had joined swimming classes from May 21, just one day before the incident. He was alloted the evening shift which reportedly began at 5.15 pm and lasted for an hour. Around 6.30 pm on Friday, Mukul’s father received a call from the swimming pool authorities, who reportedly informed him that his son had drowned in the pool and was being rushed to the GTB Hospital. By the time the boy’s father, Anil Sharma, could reach there, he was informed that Mukul was declared dead on arrival at the hospital.

Mukul’s body was sent for a postmortem and the police took up the investigation. Later, it emerged that two life guards – Bhaskar Kaushik and Jai Singh – were present during the incident and they were supposed to look after every child, especially the starters. They were booked under section 304A (causing death by negligence) of IPC and arrested, the police official added.