Gym equipment falls on 4-year-old in MCD park, kid dies

A four-year-old boy died on Sunday evening after a part of a machine in an open-air gym fell on him in a municipality-run park in west Delhi’s Moti Nagar. A case under charges of negligence has ben registered.
Deputy commissioner of police (west) Vichitra Veer said that the boy was identified as Arvind, a resident of the same neighbourhood.
Police said that the boy used to live with his mother — a housemaker — in the area while his father, Sanjay, is currently working as a laborer in Saudi Arabia. The family is originally from Nepal.
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Arvind was with his mother in the park in A-block and was playing when the equipment part fell on his chest, following which he became unconscious. He was rushed to the neighburing Acharya Bhikshu hospital, where he was declared dead.
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A local resident who did not wish to be identified said, “There were many people in the park at the time of the incident. He had just held on to the wheel attached to an iron pole and it fell on him. The weight was enough to make him unconscious. We suspect that the nuts and bolts of the equipment were loose which led to the incident.”
“Arvind’s family is originally from Nepal. The postmortem was conducted at Deen Dayal Upadhyay hospital on Monday and the family left for Nepal,” the neighbour said.
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Meanwhile, New Delhi MP Bansuri Swaraj attributed the incident to negligence in maintenance of Delhi’s municipal corporation parks and said that compensation be offered to the bereaved family. She also said that she was informed about a similar incident in the area last year where a swing collapsed in a park.
Swaraj said there was a need for a safety audit of all swings and fitness machines in the parks, citing ‘the poor condition of these public spaces under the Municipal Corporation of Delhi.’
MCD did not respond to HT’s requests for a comment on the accident.