Bengalure: A 13-year-old boy drowned in the swimming pool of Glitzy Publi School in Chunchaghatta on Kothanur Main Road here on Thursday afternoon.
The victim, Gaurav, was a resident of Hosakerehalli was a student of Adams School in the same area.
The management of Glitzy Public School, which runs the swimming centre, allows public to use the pool by charging Rs 40 for 45 minutes.
The management had appointed two lifeguards, Mahendra and Kalegowda, and their office is located right in front of the pool. But the duo were not present at the poolside when the tragedy occurred.
There were no life jackets and other safety measures were not in place, the police said.
Swimming coach Raju is said to have quit the job a fortnight ago and at present there is no regular coach on the campus.
Gaurav, his friends Bharath and Pradeep, went to the pool around 12:30 pm. They were accompanied by Bharath’s father Satish (40) who runs a salon.
CCTV footage shows Gaurav swimming comfortably for 45 minutes before drowning, said the police. The minimum depth is about four feet and the maximum is around 6.5 feet.?After swimming for 45 minutes, Gaurav moved towards the deeper end of the pool.
Later, an exhausted Gaurav started drowning. Nine others who were swimming in the pool did not notice him drowning. After they came out of the pool around 1:45 pm, they realised that Gaurav was missing.
They then spotted his body in the pool. On being alerted, the police reached the school and shifted Gaurav’s body for post-mortem to KIMS. Later, the body was taken to his native village of Juttenahalli in Chennarayapattana taluk of Hassan district.
The victim’s father, Prabhakar, is a manager at the Bata Showroom in RBI Layout and his mother is a homemaker. Gaurav was their only child.
The police have booked a case of negligence leading to death under IPC?Section 304 (A) against the school’s founder principal Usha Naresh. The police said they will arrest Usha, and lifeguards Mahendra and Kalegowda.
Rs 2 cr to techie who drowned in pool
In December 2014, the National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission awarded a compensation of Rs two crore to the family of a software engineer who drowned in a BBMP-owned swimming pool at Jayanagar during a summer camp.
Smruti Ranjan Sharma, 27, drowned on April 16, 2008. A resident of JP Nagar, Sharma had enrolled for a summer camp in swimming. Although the swimming pool belonged to the BBMP, it was leased to the PM Swimming Centre for conducting swimming classes. The commission ordered the PM?Swimming Centre to pay Rs 1.35 crore and the BBMP to pay Rs 50 lakh to Sharma’s family. The remaining Rs 15 lakh was to be paid by the Oriental?Insurance Company.
“The day Sharma drowned, the swimming pool was crowded. There was no coach, lifeguards or other employees from the leaseholder present at the time of the incident and nobody noticed his drowning. No immediate steps were taken by the swimming pool authorities to either give first aid or to rush the victim to the hospital,” the commission said in its order.
