Missing boy’s body found after 19 hours search, BJP stages demo near BMC office

The body was later handed over to the family members after the postmortem.Meanwhile, the Bhubaneswar unit of BJP, which lodged a police complaint against the Bhubaneswar Municipality Corporation BMC commissioner, staged a demonstration in front of the civic bodys head quarters at Kalpana area here.The activists demanded adequate compensation for the victims family and stringent action against the officials responsible for death of the boy.

After about 19 hours of frantic search, the Odisha Fire Service personnel on Monday recovered the body of a 15-year-old boy who went missing after falling into a roadside open drain at Shatabdi Nagar in the state capital here, police said.

The body was recovered from bamboo shrubs near the drain at Panchasakha Nagar, about 10 kilometers from the place of occurrence. The body was later taken to AIIMS-Bhubaneswar, where the family members identified it as Jyotirmaya Behera alias Raja, a class 10 student who fell into the drain near Lane 7 in Shatabdi Nagar Bank Colony in Siripur on Sunday, they said.

Soon after the incident, a team of around 40 fire brigade personnel, along with police and residents had launched a search and rescue operation to trace the missing boy.

The boy fell into the drain while going to attend a tuition class on Sunday afternoon. The body was later handed over to the family members after the postmortem.

Meanwhile, the Bhubaneswar unit of BJP, which lodged a police complaint against the Bhubaneswar Municipality Corporation (BMC) commissioner, staged a demonstration in front of the civic body’s headquarters at Kalpana area here.

The activists demanded adequate compensation for the victim’s family and stringent action against the officials responsible for the death of the boy. ''The boy’s death is a clear instance of negligence on part of the BMC. We demand Rs 50 lakh compensation to the victim’s family and arrest of BMC commissioner,'' said BJP Bhubaneswar unit president Babu Singh while staging a demonstration in front of the BMC office here.

The opposition Congress had also staged a dharna near the mishap site on Sunday evening while condemning the BMC’s inaction and negligence.

As many as six persons have died after being swept away in the open drains in Bhubaneswar in the last six years, sources in the police said, adding that similar incidents were reported in 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2021.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)