Four days after he fell into a storm water drain in Bengaluru during a sudden deluge, the search for BBMP worker Shantakumar ended on a saddening note, with his body going unfound. Although rescue personnel worked tirelessly, the massive amounts of garbage and silt in the drain made all their efforts go in vain.
When search and rescue operations were first underway, a relative of Shantakumar had told the media that all they wanted was to see his face for one last time. However, this desperate wish of theirs will go unfulfilled.
BBMP Mayor G Padmavathi announced on Wednesday that the search for 24-year-old Shanthakumar, has been called off. The Mayor said that the rescue team "toiled day and night but in vain" and a decision was taken to suspend the search.
The Mayor said the team deployed for the operation had been the same team involved in other search efforts, including the Maastigudi accident. “They worked very hard ignoring the stench. They covered a distance of 32km but could not trace him,” the Mayor told Deccan Herald.
The Mayor also said that they are planning to give his family a compensation of Rs 10 lakh after it had initially proposed an amount of Rs 1 lakh, the DH report said.
Shanthakumar, a JCB operator employed with a BBMP contractor, was working to construct a drain's retaining wall in Kundanahalli when he was washed away in the deluge.
Mayor Padmavathi had earlier said that rescue personnel had found it extremely difficult to locate Shantakumar because of the accumulation of massive amounts of garbage and silt in the drains.
“The NDRF personnel are facing a lot of difficulty in finding the body because of the silt and garbage accumulated in the storm water drains. The search operation is currently on at Kumbagodu and a large number of thermocol boards have been floating at the end of the rajakaluve, where we are hoping to find his body,” Mayor Padmavati had said on Tuesday.