A two-year-old boy, the son of a labourer couple, succumbed to his injuries hours after he fell into a pit that had been dug for a lift shaft at an under-construction building site in Kodipalya, near Kengeri Gate on Friday morning.
The child’s parents, who hail from Vijayapura, work on the site as construction labourers and watchmen, and lived in a temporary shed on the work site. The police suspect that the child, Vinod Kumar, may have followed his mother to the under-construction building when she went to work.
“He was playing in the compound of the building, while the parents were working elsewhere in the same building. The boy went near the lift shaft, which is around 10 feet deep. It was filled with water from recent rains. However, he lost his footing and fell into the pit,” said a police officer.
Workers in the area saw the boy fall but could not prevent him from falling. They immediately rescued him from the pit. “Vinod was still alive when he was pulled out of the pit, but had a head injury. He was rushed to a nearby private hospital but died a few hours later,” a police official said.
The Kengeri police have registered a case of causing death due to negligence against the building owner. The lift shaft was kept open with no safety precautions or barricades to prevent anyone from falling. “Given that the pit was around 10 feet deep and was filled with water, it was a potential danger to even adults working at the site. We are investigating the case,” the police said.
