“The children who accompanied Faiz told us that the boy removed his shirt and entered the tank to retrieve the book and drowned in the process,” said Balapur sub inspector S. Vishnu Vardhan Reddy. (Representational Image)

Hyderabad: In a tragic incident, an 11 year-old-boy doing ‘Hifz’ (memorisation of Quran) course at a Madrasa in Shaheennagar drowned in a tank on Friday morning. Police, revenue and fire personnel were still trying to retrieve the body when reports last came in.

The victim, Mohd Faiz, a native of Lucknow, was in the second year of the five-year ‘Hifz’ course at Madrasa Kanzul-ul-Uloom in Shaheennagar, under Balapur police station.

According to police, Faiz had gone to the ‘Sandal ki Bowli’ tank, some 500 metres from the seminary, at around 9 am, along with four friends. The group spotted a religious book floating in the water.

“The children who accompanied Faiz told us that the boy removed his shirt and entered the tank to retrieve the book and drowned in the process,” said Balapur sub inspector S. Vishnu Vardhan Reddy.

On seeing Faiz drowning, his friends alerted a local who, in turn, informed Balapur police. The children then rushed to the Madrasa and informed the management.

Police and fire personnel reached the spot and began efforts to retrieve the body.

Fire personnel tried to fish out the body but failed. By evening, police had roped in expert swimmers and local municipal authorities arranged water pumps to empty the tank. TRS legislator Teegala Krishna Reddy also reached the spot, but heavy rains hampered the effort.

Police have registered a case under Section 174 (suspicious death) of CrPC and are investigating. They are probing how and why the children came out of the Madrasa in the morning. The management told the police that it was their weekly holiday on Friday.

Shaheennagar calls for barricading the pond

Following the drowning of the 11-year-old Madrasa student, Saheennagar residents have demanded that the tank be barricaded to prevent more such deaths.

Locals said Friday’s was not the first such incident there. “A few years ago, two youngsters drowned there, but the authorities have taken no measures to prevent such tragedies,” said Mohammed Ali, a local businessman.

The pond is located in the middle of a locality. Children come to play there everyday. Locals shoo them away to prevent any untoward incident, but it is impossible to keep a watch all the time, said Amjad, another resident. A kilometre away from the place is the Jalpally pond, where drowning cases are reported regularly, especially during summer months. “Each year, at least five people drown there, many of them children and teenagers from Shaheennagar, Bandla-guda and Chandrayan-gutta,” says Ashrafullah Khan, a resident of Bandlaguda. “It concerns children’s safety, it should be done on priority basis,” said Junaid Khan.