Rishikesh Gupta and his mother were walking on the pavement on their way back to Om Shri Balaji Darshan Apartment in Bhayandar (E) on Tuesday night, December 15, when he suddenly fell into an open manhole. His mother was unaware of it as she was walking ahead. When she realised that Rishikesh was nowhere in sight, she started shouting for help.
 
Locals helped her search for Rishikesh. When she neared the open manhole, she could see her son's slippers through the opening. The fire brigade was called and after a two hour search, they were about to leave the area, when a fireman spotted a hand in the dark gutter. It turned out to be the body of Rishikesh. The child had been trapped in the huge garbage mess of vegetable leftovers which had clogged the gutter, said Classo Fernandes, chief fire officer, Mira Bhayandar Municipal Corporation (MBMC) Fire Brigade.

 
He has blamed the local vegetable vendors, who openly throw discarded vegetable ends in to the manhole. Senior PI Rajendra Mohite of Navghar Police Station visited the site and took stock of the situation. A case of accidental death has been registered, he said.
 
Meanwhile, MBMC Deputy Commissioner, Sambhaji Panpatte said the MBMC would replace all iron manhole covers with fibreglass covers to prevent theft. He said even concrete lids were not spared by thieves. The MBMC will conduct a survey of all manholes in Mira Road and Bhayandar within a fortnight and undertake the replacement job, he added. In February 2009, an eight year old boy, Irshad Ahmed, had fallen to death into an open manhole in the same area.
 
According the Citizen Journalist show on CNN-IBN, there is more to the story. It said that the fire brigade personnel had allegedly not agreed to look for the child in the manhole. When they went down after 30 minutes, the boy had perished inside and only his body could be pulled out.
 
As per the media reports, Senior PI Rajendra Mohite of Navghar Police Station visited the site and took stock of the situation. A case of accidental death has been registered. In reality, there has been no report filed by the Police even now. When the child's father went to the police station and pleaded with the police to file the FIR, he was reportedly told that they were waiting for a permission from the higher up people.

This is a blatant denial of justice to a already a pain stricken family, which is yet to recover from the shock of losing their three year old child. I even met the Commissioner of the Mira-Bhayander Municipal Corporation Shivmurthy Naik who refused to take any responsibility stating that the incident occured due to stealing of the manhole covers.
 
The Manhole covers which he described to us as being stolen are made of concrete and not iron. In the entire Mira-Bhayander Area there may be hardly 10 or 15 manhole covers which are made of iron.