india

Updated: Oct 21, 2019 19:57 IST

16-year-old Kerala boy Abheel Johonson’s fight for life ended on Monday, 17 days after he was unintentionally hit on the head by a flying hammer thrown by an athlete at the state junior athletic meet on October 4 in Pala, Kottayam.

Abheel, a class 11 student at the St. Thomas Higher Secondary School in Pala, was volunteering at the sports meet for the javelin throw event when a three-kg hammer hurled from about 35 metres away by a hammer-throw participant, hit him on the left side of the forehead, knocking him out instantaneously.

Abheel was rushed to the Kottayam medical college hospital with severe head injuries where he was operated upon twice during the past couple of weeks. His condition deteriorated on Monday and efforts to revive him failed, doctors said.

State government had earlier asked for booking the concerned officials for negligence. Initial probe suggested that the decision to hold both javelin and hammer throw events concurrently was a bad one.

Abheel, an avid football player who had trained at the academy run by the Kerala Blasters-- one of the teams in the Indian Soccer League, was collecting javelins as a volunteer when the hammer struck him. An official, who described it as a “freak accident”, said the mishap should have been averted. The sport meet had been called off after the incident.