An 11-year-old boy, who went missing on Saturday, is feared to have drowned in a storm-water drain near his home in Marathahalli in HAL police station limits.
The police and fire service personnel, who launched a search operation on Wednesday, were unable to trace Yeshwanth Achari till Thursday evening.
No breakthrough
A Fire Department official said his 15-member team, trawling the drain in a coracle on Wednesday, even covered the Varthur lake into which the drain empties itself, on Thursday. Deputy Commissioner of Police (Southeast) P.S. Harsha told The Hindu the Fire Department was handling the search operation. “There has been no breakthrough so far.”
A fire official involved in the operation said a body that has been lying immersed in water for more than three days is bound to automatically float. “But we haven’t found any body in the drain or the lake. Unless the body is stuck or caught somewhere in the drain, we would have found it by now.”
What happened
On Saturday afternoon, Yeshwanth and five of his friends, all classmates at the local government school, went out to play and later for a swim in the storm-water drain.
When he did not return that night, his parents lodged a missing complaint with the HAL police.
It was only on Tuesday that his friends revealed that he might have drowned in the drain. The other boys did not reveal this information earlier as they were frightened about what had happened, police said.
Yeshwanth is the youngest child of Ramanjaneya Achari, a carpenter, and Rathnamma, a homemaker.
The couple is accompanying the search team, police said.
