Missing 15-Year-Old Boy's Body Found After 19-Hour Search In Odisha

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, police said.

The body was recovered from bamboo shrubs near the drain at Panchasakha Nagar, about 10 kilometre 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 local 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 Municipal Corporation (BMC) commissioner, staged a demonstration in front of the civic body's head quarters at Kalpana area here.

The activists demanded adequate compensation for the victim's family and stringent action against the officials responsible for 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 accident 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 last six years, sources in police said, adding that similar incidents were reported in 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2021.