LAHORE: An autistic child drowned in the open manhole near the office of the medical director (MD) of the Children Hospital where he was brought for treatment. His body was recovered two hours after his mother made frantic efforts, knocking at the door of every admin official of the hospital.

The tragic death of the minor boy took place on Saturday due to the alleged negligence of the hospital management, which had hushed up the incident.

Identified as Muhammad Basim Ikhlaq (3), child was recovered dead by the hospital sweeper two hours after he fell into the open manhole. The hospital did not seek Rescue 1122’s help for the search of the body, fearing that the matter would go public.

Basim Ikhlaq was brought to the hospital for treatment of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) that affects a child’s development, growth and nervous system.

Officials ignored mother’s cries for help; father had gone out to buy toy

An official, privy to the information, said the child had fallen into the manhole soon after he demanded a toy to play in the ground and his father went out to buy the toy. He said the most disturbing part of the incident was that the hospital had covered (hid) the manhole with grass, a criminal negligence that led to the tragedy as the manhole worked as a trap.

The victim boy’s family said the hospital tried to hush up the matter as it neither called Rescue 1122 nor the police to search for their child. They said the hospital staff had covered it with bushes and small pieces of grass despite knowing that it could pose a serious threat to anybody.

“Had the hospital administration called the Rescue 1122, my son would have been recovered alive,” Basim’s father, Ikhlaq Ahmad, told Dawn.

He lashed out at the hospital for the two-hour delay in taking action, saying his wife ran from the pillar to post but no one paid heed to her repeated requests to find her ‘missing child’ by at least checking the security cameras installed in the surroundings of the greenbelt where she had left their son to play.

According to Ikhlaq, on finding the hospital management unmoved to her repeated requests, his wife herself tried to call Rescue 1122 and police emergency 15 but the calls were either not attended or referred to the branch/staff concerned. As the last resort, she rushed to the hospital’s mosque for announcement after coming back from the nearby police station where the muharrar and the SHO referred her case to each other, wasting further time for timely recovery of her missing child.

When Ikhlaq came back to the hospital after buying a toy for his son, his wife told him the bad news. Finally, some attendants of other patients came to help, alerted the hospital’s top officials who ‘engaged’ a sweeper to launch a search in the five-foot deep manhole.

“It was a very painful and terrible time for me and my wife when the sweeper recovered the body of my son from the manhole,” Ikhlaq said.

He exposed the cruel behaviour of the hospital officials who refused to help them in shifting the body to his native city of Kasur.

“I had to call my maternal uncle who was a property dealer in Gulberg and we took the body to Kasur.”

Ikhlaq said his wife was still struggling with the trauma because she would visit the Children Hospital on every appointment for the treatment of Basim. He demanded Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz to take action and hold an impartial inquiry into the criminal negligence that led to the death of his son.

The hospital official revealed the manhole was situated at the greenbelt right in the backside of the office of MD Prof Tipu Sultan, an area under the constant surveillance of security cameras and guards. It posed a bigger threat to the lives of children/patients as the parents would often leave them at the greenbelts and parks during the treatment process.

Institute of Child Health/Children Hospital Vice Chancellor Prof Masood Sadiq said the incident took place in the greenbelt, which was fenced from all sides.

While putting entire blame on the mother of the boy, he said, it seemed that she had jumped into the fenced greenbelt along with his sick baby, which led to the tragic incident as that particular area (greenbelt) was not in common use.

To a question about the negligence of covering a manhole with the bushes and grass, Prof Sadiq said he was not aware of the matter since Children Hospital MD Prof Tipu Sultan was the most relevant officer to talk about it as he was managing all the administrative affairs of the institute.

This reporter tried many times but Prof Tipu neither attended the calls nor responded to the text messages.

Published in Dawn, November 18th, 2024