A 15-year-old life had to be snuffed out for the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) to wake up.

On the crater-riddled Dinesh Nagar Road in Bansdroni, where Soumyo Sil suffered fatal injuries on Wednesday morning after being hit by the arm of a payloader engaged in a rush job ahead of Durga Puja, work that looked more serious was underway on Thursday.

Late on Thursday, police arrested Shambhu Kumar Ram, 21, the driver of the payloader. The police said Ram was a resident of Jagadishpur village in Bihar’s Siwan.

The rear hanger of the payloader hit the Class IX student on his way to tuition.

Since early Thursday, groups of labourers have been repairing the uneven ground around the accident site on Dinesh Nagar Road, digging up several metres of the road and re-laying it uniformly.

Sand, loaded on wheelbarrows, was brought on a war footing to cover the even surface and bricks were laid on the top to make the stretch worthy of any vehicle.

Barring the accident spot, which was barricaded with guard rails, a large part of the road saw workers toil through the day to make it resemble a thoroughfare.

Senior KMC officials said workers would be deployed on the stretch over the next few days.

The residents have been demanding this since 2017, when the road was dug up for a project to upgrade the drainage and sewerage of a large part of the city’s southern
suburbs.

“It’s unfortunate that it took a child’s death for civic officials to sit up and take note of our plight. Deep craters, undulating road surfaces and open drains all around — is this what we expect from the civic body?” said Anima Pal, a resident of Gitanagar, adjoining Dinesh Nagar.

Even as work began, on the remaining stretch of the road two-wheeler riders continued to get off their vehicles and walk, unable to negotiate undulations and craters.

“Apart from Dinesh Nagar Road, the restoration work that has been taken up will cover smaller roads and bylanes in the area that were dug up to lay underground pipes as part of the Kolkata Environmental Improvement Investment Program (KEIIP),” said Tarakeswar Chakraborty, chairman of the KMC’s Borough 11, which covers the wards where work is on.

Dinesh Nagar Road connects Renia, in Ward 35 of Rajpur-Sonarpur Municipality, and Dinesh Nagar, which is part of Ward 113 of the KMC. It is the only thoroughfare that allows thousands of residents of Renia to access parts of the city proper, senior officials of the KMC said.

“This road restoration work is temporary. Final work will be taken up after the project’s completion,” Chakraborty said.

Soumyo’s father Sankar said: “My son would go to his tuition every morning. He had been taken to the hospital by the time I reached the accident site on Wednesday.... When I reached the hospital, my son was no more.”

No one from the KMC visited the family, the father said.

Local councillor Anita Kar Mazumder was unavailable when The Telegraph tried to meet him at her Rifle Club Road house in Bansdroni and the Trinamool Congress office in her locality. Calls to her from this newspaper went unanswered.

She visited Bansdroni police station briefly on Wednesday afternoon.