Boy drowns in pool at school excursion

Police said the boy, Prabhakaran Eswaran, a class VII student of Sri Lakshmi higher secondary school, got stuck in an underwater net fixed to mark the water boundaries for different category of users in different depths of the pool.

The incident happened at the Queensland amusement park in Palanjur near Poonamalee on the Chennai – Bengaluru highway where the boy had gone with 150 other students from his school.

On Sunday afternoon, relatives and friends of the boy, protested at the Kilpauk medical college campus, refusing to receive the body after postmortem saying a case should be booked against people responsible for the death of the boy.

Prabhakaran’s father Eswaran, who works in a private transport firm in Guindy, was in a state of shock and his wife was inconsolable while others took up the protest and demanded compensation.

Some of the protesters also charged the accompanying teachers with carelessness. Police had to step in with a promise to take appropriate action against ‘those responsible for the boy’s death’.

“The boy was sliding into the pool along with his friends and his leg got stuck in the net as he landed in the water. As he was struggling to free himself from the net, he swallowed water and became unconscious,” police sources said. He was rushed to a nearby hospital by the theme park staff and his teachers, but doctors declared him dead on arrival.

While the theme park manager refused to react to the incident despite this newspaper contacting him many times, the local police inspector brushed aside the incident as a simple drowning case.

“There was nothing wrong with the safety precautions at the park. The boy drank excess water and died. It is a case of drowning,” inspector Alexander told this newspaper when he was contacted to find out if the Nazaratpet police had registered any case against the management of the theme park.

“Where is the need for booking the management for the incident? It was a simple case of drowning,” the inspector said, defending the management of the theme park. At least 18 people suffered minor injuries when a giant wheel on the same amusement park malfunctioned on January 14, 2014.

“Even on Sunday there was nobody from school and the park to pay homage to our boy,” said Mr Ashokan, Prabhakaran’s uncle, when this newspaper spoke to him.

“The incident should have happened around 12 noon. At around 12.15 pm Saturday, the boy’s mother received a call asking about his health details. They wanted to know if Prabhakaran had any history of seizures. She told the caller that he was a healthy boy. Then the caller told that he was not well and was admitted to a hospital. Then the family dispatched a friend to private hospital. At the hospital, he was initially told that the boy was in ICU. But later our friend found that he was in the mortuary. The body was later shifted to Kilpauk medical college by the police,” he said.

Ashokan, who runs a workshop, says that throughout the weekend nobody from school or the park bothered to console the family. “When we went to the Nazarathpet police station, there were some staff members from the school. They said they were coming from the school and claimed that they had no idea how Prabhakaran died. After speaking to a few policemen, they left. We have given a complaint against the school and the Queensland amusement park,” he added.

The family members also noted that if the police really wanted to know what happened in the park, they could browse through the footage of the surveillance cameras captured between 11 am and 1 pm on Saturday. It will show how our boy died, noted Ashokan.