SALEM: In a shocking spectacle, four boys in the seven-to-17-years age-group were found drowned in a sewage pond near the Mettur reservoir in the district on Monday.
Police said the youth, Raja, 12, Tamizhmagan, 9, Mohanraj, 7 and Manikandan, 17, all neighbourhood friends of Salem Camp Anna Nagar area in Mettur, had on Sunday gone for ‘catching sparrows’ in the dam area, but did not return till midnight last night.
The parents of the boys frantically searched at various places but to no avail. However, on Monday morning, few locals who took their cattle for grazing in patches close to the ‘16 gate Ellis Surplus Sluices Bridge’, near the Mettur reservoir, found four boys dead in a sewage pond close to an outlet for discharging waste water and chemical effluents.
The cattle-grazers alerted the local police. Fire and Rescue Services personnel and policemen from Karumalaikoodal police station rushed to the spot, retrieved the bodies of the four youth from the sewage pond and sent them to the Salem government hospital for post-mortem. Police are enquiring whether the boys died due to any water contamination from the effluents possibly let out from chemical units and other nearby small industries in the SIDCO industrial estate in Mettur, or died of other causes. Nonetheless, the four boys found dead in the sewage pond has sent shockwaves in Mettur town and nearby villages.
