A six-year-old boy died after he drove an e-rickshaw into a wall of his house in Rajarhat and a glass shard from the windshield pierced his throat on Dashami afternoon, police said.
The Poddar family in Rajarhat has been organising Durga Puja in their house for 59 years and the e-rickshaw had been hired to ferry puja items from the market to their house in Poddar Para, near Rajarhat police station.
The driver of the three-wheeler had parked the vehicle beside the boundary wall of the house and went inside to deliver the items, leaving the key of the e-rickshaw in its slot, said an officer of the Bidhannagar commissionerate.
Six-year-old Ajitesh Poddar, who was playing in the courtyard of the house, spotted the e-rickshaw and climbed into it. He placed himself on the driver’s seat and turned the throttle on the handlebar, a family member said. Sushanta Poddar, the boy’s uncle, said the family members who had gathered in the courtyard were all busy in pre-immersion rituals such as baran and sindoor khela.
“We had no clue that Ajitesh had stepped outside and climbed into the e-rickshaw,” Poddar said.
The family were alerted by a loud noise and the boy’s screams. They rushed out and found the boy had slumped on the ground with blood all around him. “We could not even understand initially what had happened. Ajitesh was lying in a pool of blood. As we turned him over we found a glass shard stuck in his throat,” said Poddar.
The Class I student was rushed to Charnock Hospital in Rajarhat’s Chinar Park. A spokesperson for the hospital said Ajitesh had lost consciousness by the time he was taken to the hospital.
“His neck had almost severed and he lost a lot of blood. We could not revive him,” said the spokesperson.
A senior officer of the Bidhannagar commissionerate said the preliminary post-mortem report mentioned cardiac arrest triggered by a massive loss of blood from the injury as the cause of death.
“We are probing the case from all angles. We will question the driver,” the officer said.