‘They brought him wrapped like a bundle’: Father of 4-year-old who died in open manhole

Shahjahan (35) sits slumped on a steel bench at Sanjay Gandhi Memorial Hospital, exhausted and in tears. For over 24 hours, she has been crying, fainting, and calling out her four-year-old son Imran’s name — sometimes mumbling it, at other times screaming. Beside her sits her elder son, just six years old, watching his mother helplessly.

Hours earlier, Shahjahan had seen the dismembered remains of Imran, who fell into an open manhole in Outer Delhi on Tuesday. His body parts were recovered from a water treatment plant nearly 7 km away on Wednesday.

Police suspect the body was dismembered by the large rotating machines that filter and treat wastewater at a sewage treatment plant before the parts were recovered from the water treatment plant.

The family had gone to Das Garden in Outer Delhi’s Baprola on Tuesday. Shahjahan’s husband, Khurshid Alam, a construction worker, often brought his wife and two sons to the park, around 3 km from their home in Som Bazaar, while he worked nearby.

In a neighbourhood of old dilapidated buildings housing mostly daily-wage earners,

Das Garden was one of the

few places where children could play. It even has a swimming pool. “I work as a labourer nearby. He wanted to come to the park, so I brought my family along and left the children with their mother. They would have gone home by evening,” Alam said. In the afternoon, Imran wanted to relieve himself.

The park and a barren plot of land are located on opposite sides of a service road. The Najafgarh drain runs underneath the plot. Overgrown with shrubs and soaked in sewage water, the plot is surrounded by a seven-foot boundary wall. A section of the wall is missing, with an iron hinge suggesting there was once a gate there.

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Alam said Imran and his mother entered the plot through this opening. About 10 m inside was an open manhole, around 50 feet deep. “He went towards the manhole to relieve himself. The hole was covered with some plastic sheet. He stepped on it and slipped inside. His brother screamed. That’s when I came running,” Alam said.

The manhole connects to a sewer line running parallel to the Najafgarh drain. The drain empties into the Yamuna, while the sewer travels about 7 km, crossing areas like Ranhola, and emptying into the water treatment plant in Nilothi, Nihal Vihar.

At 3.21 pm, local residents called the police and personnel from Ranhola police station began rescue operations. When the boy was not found until 9 pm, teams from the NDRF and Fire Brigade, along with the BSF, were roped in. The operation was halted at 10 pm before it resumed on Wednesday morning.

The teams started scavenging the manhole using floodlights and thick ropes, in an attempt to attach it to any remains of the child. Around 11 am, Imran’s body parts were found near the end of the drain at the water treatment plant.

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Residents alleged that the manhole had remained open for over six months despite complaints. “We complained to the authorities over five months ago to close the manhole. But no action was taken,” said a resident of Das Colony.

Imran’s uncle, Pappu, recalled that the boy always wanted to visit the park. “He just wanted to keep coming back. Yesterday also, he came… He loved to play here.”

Alam, meanwhile, is waiting to pick up parts of Imran’s body. ­“They brought him wrapped like a bundle. Hands, legs, everything separated. Now, I have to go and collect the pieces tomorrow,” he said.