Railway engineer fired after boy falls into its abandoned tubewell

Bangladesh Railway has fired a senior sub-assistant engineer after a 4-year old boy fell into an abandoned deep tubewell of a project it runs at Dhaka's Shahjahanpur.

Senior Correspondentbdnews24.com
Published : 26 Dec 2014, 06:55 PM
Updated : 26 Dec 2014, 07:07 PM

Jahangir Alam was the in charge of the project.

Project contractor, SR House, which was installing a new deep tube-well at the site, has been blacklisted.

Bangladesh Railway Director General Tofazzal Hossain confirmed to bdnews24.com at around 10:30pm on Friday of Alam’s removal and SR House’s blacklisting.

“A new deep tube-well was being installed there. But they were working without sealing the mouth of the old deep tube-well.”

He said the contractor was supposed to seal the old tube-well’s mouth while ‘conducting this sort of work’.

Hossain said the blacklisting meant the contractor was disqualified for all future works of railway.

“Decision on legal actions (against the firm) will be made later,” he added.

‘Jihad’ fell into the 'several hundred feet' deep pipe adjacent to a playground at the Shahjahanpur Railway Colony at around 3:30pm while playing with his friends.

Fire-fighters were trying to pull out Jihad from the well using rope. They made five abortive attempts until 9pm on Friday.

They were planning to save the boy by digging and bringing up the pipe which is 400 to 600 feet long using a crane, said Fire Service official Maj Shakil Newaz, who is overseeing the rescue efforts.