The rescue teams are at work in Downtown, Srinagar. The job at hand is to rescue the body of eight-year-old boy who accidentally slipped into the river. Past two to three months we have seen scores of such cases where you g children ended up dead after either taking a bath or accidentally slipping into the river.
While the rescue teams are trying their level best to haul out the dead body of the child a few haunting questions state us straight in the face. What was the eight-year-old child doing on the banks of a river where the bank slope is so steep? Why was he unaccompanied? Are parents to partly blame for this incident? Is the administration to be partly blamed for the incident? Whatever be the case but the fact remains that eight-year-old child is lying at the bottom of the river giving an unmanageable amount of pain to his parents and relatives. A life has been lost.
The video journalists are shamelessly lapping down the views and shares they are getting by interviewing the parents of the child. One wonders if that will change anything. Wisdom has it that the parents of the child be left alone to grieve in privacy. To encroach their privacy at this hour would tantamount to unprofessional journalism.
The government must identify spots along the densely populated parts of the river Jhelum banks in Srinagar and do a proper fencing. Fencing at vulnerable spots can prevent unassuming children from slipping into the river. It can prevent deaths. People who live along the banks of this river right from Lasjan to Chattabal need to be careful. The river Jhelum is not so peaceful as it appears from outside. It has caused hundreds of deaths in the last three to four decades. The most vulnerable parts of the banks are from the downtown side where the current is very strong and the banks are steep.
Our sympathies with the families of the victim in this case.
