News
Two teenagers drown in sand extracted pit
View(s):By Richard Walter Perera
The two children who met with their deaths while playing in a huge pit from which sand was extracted and subsequently filled with water, at Udangawa –Kochchikade in Negombo, were identified as R.Danush and R. Priyadarshan both aged 13.
The two were studying in Grade 8 at Tamil Maha Vidyalaya, Thoppu Kochchikade. They had left home telling their parents they were going for tuition but had instead gone for a swim with another two boys of the same age, in a huge pit dredged for sand but now filled with water to a depth of 40 to 50 feet, not knowing that it would be their final journey on earth.
Poster of the drowned boys
While playing in the water for sometime they had even taken selfies and the tragedy occurred when they had tried to go further into the pit.
A youth named Chathuranga working in a brick-kiln nearby had rushed to the place and dragged one boy out of the pit.
Thoppu Tamil M. V Principal A.M.S. Brito said though both boys were studying at his school this incident occurred at about 4 p.m. after school hours. Both children had joined the school very recently. One boy was from Batticaloa and the other from Matugama. One boy’s mother is working abroad.
My appeal is that villagers should get together and do something to fill these pits, he said.
Danush’s mother Navamani Devi (39) still weeps over her son and said ‘my son is a very quiet child. He never goes there to bathe. The other child is very mischievous. We don’t know whether he had asked my son to come and swim in that pit. My son likes phones. Because of his interest in taking selfies he too must have joined them.’
Her 39-year-old husband, a tailor by profession said ‘we never go to that place to bathe. It is about 40 to 50 feet deep.’
M. Anthony, a resident and a teacher at Thoppu Tamil M.V living close to this huge pit said ‘ These pits are a threat to our lives. There are some more pits like this in our village. This pit alone covers an area of about three acres. On an earlier occasion two people were drowned at the same spot. As these pits are at our doorstep children tend to play and swim here. This is land I inherited but now I cant bear to live here’.
R. Danush
Parents of Danush
Chathuranga