NEW DELHI: Sriti Mondal, 4, and Piyu Midde, 5, were playing outside their homes on a hot summer day in June, while their families were busy with routine chores in Maipith village in the South 24 Paraganas district in West Bengal. Sriti’s grandmother suddenly realized that she could not hear the children play and raised an alarm. Neighbours joined the search to look for the girls and found them drowned in an unfenced pond 6-metres from their homes. Two years have passed, but the pain of the loss is writ large on the faces of the family and the community. These deaths could have been prevented if the pond was barricaded.
Sriti Mondal’s family (left to right, aunt, cousin and grandmother) still relive the horror and worry about other young children in community (Rina Sinha / © WHO India)
Most villages in this region called the Sunderbans (‘beautiful forests’ in Bangla) have several water bodies around homes, which present a drowning risk, especially for young children. Sunderbans is a part of the world’s largest delta and its brackish waters, mudflats and mangroves, are home to incredible biodiversity and the Royal Bengal Tiger.
Drowning is sudden, abrupt, and shocking, with people often not realizing it's happening until it's too late. What leads to drowning often happens in just a few seconds: a small child slipping unnoticed into a pond or pool.
Mr Surya Pal is a 15-year-old hero from the adjacent Bhuwaneshwari village in the South 24 Paraganas district. In 2021, on his way home from play, he saw his 4-year-old neighbour Raju Jana drowning in a pukur (pond). He immediately raised an alarm, hearing which an adult jumped in to save the child. Mr Pal said Raju fell into a pond again in June 2024, but this time there was no one to rescue him. He drowned.
Mr Surya Pal is a 15-year-old hero from Bhuwaneshwari village in South 24 Paraganas district of West Bengal who helped save a child from drowning in his village (Rina Sinha / © WHO India)
Mr Pal has joined a ‘child parliament’ initiated by Child in Need Institute (CINI), a non-profit that works to promote health, nutrition, education and child protection. He has been elected as the leader by other children, who meet regularly to discuss and identify solutions to issues that impact children, including death by drowning.