An eight-and-a-half-year-old girl playing by the poolside of a residential complex in New Town, unaccompanied by adults, entered the pool and drowned last Saturday. Her parents were at their respective workplaces.
Mitakshi Bhowmick was taken to a hospital in New Town where she was admitted to the critical care unit. She passed away on Thursday, police said.
An officer of the Bidhannagar commissionerate said the preliminary post-mortem report listed her cause of death as drowning.
“We have got footage of security cameras and it appears the child was playing alone. She entered the water alone. We are trying to find out why she was not spotted by any of the guards of the complex,” the officer said.
Mitakshi’s mother works at the Central Institute of Fisheries Education in Salt Lake and her father works in a bank. Both were at their workplaces when the child drowned, the police said.
Mitakshi is seen on CCTV footage getting into a children's water slide that leads to the pool inside Millennium Tower, a gated society in New Town's Action Area I, said a member of the residents’ welfare association (RWA) of the housing complex.
A few minutes later, a resident who lives on the eighth floor, saw the child floating with her face down. The man rushed downstairs and alerted an electrician who could swim, the official said.
The electrician immediately jumped into the pool and dragged her out of the water and tried to revive her.
“We immediately called an ambulance and alerted her parents,” said the member of the RWA.
Mitakshi was taken to a children’s hospital in New Town, where she was admitted to the critical care unit. “However, on Thursday morning, the girl passed away,” the officer said.
The child would stay with an attendant when her parents were away. “The woman attendant told us she was cooking in the Bhowmicks’ fourth-floor flat when she was alerted by neighbours and housekeeping staff that the child had fallen into the pool,” the officer said.
“Like in most housing complexes, Millennium Tower has no trained lifeguard. One security guard was on duty near the pool when the girl entered the water,” another officer said.
“We are at a loss how none of our guards spotted the girl in the water. A lot of kids play in our compound and it is not that they are always accompanied by parents or attendants,” said a resident of Millennium Tower.
Most housing complexes in New Town have swimming pools. Members of several residents’ welfare associations said their guidelines made it clear that children must be accompanied by an adult near the pool at all times and no one below the age of five was allowed in the pool.
Debashis Sen, chairman of the New Town Kolkata Development Authority, said they would issue an advisory on “safe conduct around swimming pools”.
“We will also try to train people nominated or employed by the RWAs in life-saving skills,” Sen said.