New Delhi: A five-year-old boy died and his seven-year-old friend was severely injured after being hit by splinters of a stainless steel glass with which a neighbour had allegedly covered a firecracker at northwest Delhi’s Bhalswa Dairy area, police said today.
The incident was reported around 1.30 PM today and the children, identified as Lucky and Laksh, were rushed to Babu Jagjivan Ram hospital where Lucky succumbed to his injuries.
A local, identified as Lala Chandra Mohan (19), was bursting crackers nearby and had allegedly covered a firecracker with a stainless steel glass. After the explosion, the splinters hit the two children, said police.
Lala fled the scene and is still at large. A police case has been registered in this connection and a team is looking for the accused, police said.
“The victim died on receiving severe injuries after pieces of glass pierced his eyes and stomach,” doctors attached to the hospital said, adding that the condition of the other boy was “grave”.
In a separate incident, a 23-year-old man died after being hit by a splinter during bursting crackers in neighbouring Swaroop Nagar area yesterday.
The deceased identified as Ravi Kant was bursting crackers with his friends when a metallic splinter pierced his thigh. He was rushed to a hospital where he succumbed to his injuries, said police.
Around 500 cases of burn injuries, mostly due to firecrackers, were reported from the capital this Diwali. Five government hospitals — Safdarjung, Ram Manohar Lohia (RML), Guru Teg Bahadur (GTB), Deen Dayal Upadhyay (DDU), and Lok Nayak (LN) hospitals, designated by Delhi government to deal with cases related to burn injuries and fire cracker accidents, reported majority of the burn cases.
The Safdarjung Hospital, with the largest burns unit in the country, received around 192 cases this Diwali, mostly cracker burns, with 25 cases being reported on November 10-11 and 167 cases on November 11-12.
“Out of the 167 cases, 132 were cracker burns, 10 were diya related burns and 25 were non-firecracker related burn injuries. While 157 were treated as out-patients, 10 patients were admitted,” said Dr A K Rai, medical superintendent of Safdarjung Hospital.
According to Dr Karoon Agrawal, head of the burns and plastic surgery department of Safdarjung hospital, of the total 167 patients, almost 50 per cent were children.
The hospital last year had received 234 cases of cracker burns on Diwali.
Around 85 patients with burns visited RML hospital out of whom, four patients had to be admitted as they suffered almost 30 per cent burns, said Dr V K Tiwari, HoD of the RML hospital’s Burns and Plastic Surgery department.
A total of 153 patients were sent back home after first aid at Guru Tegh Bahadur Hospital while one patient was admitted, said Dr Dhananjay Kumar, consultant burn and plastic surgeon at GTB.
“We received around 153 patients who had suffered facial and hand injuries due to cracker bursting. One patient had to be admitted,” he said.
“Despite so much efforts being made to educate public on how to prevent such accidents, we had anticipated that the cases will go down on Diwali this year. But then people started pouring in since last evening and continued till today morning,” Kumar said.
The Lok Nayak Hospital received around 40-45 patients, including two admissions while Deen Dayal Upadhyay hospital attended to almost 150 burn cases this Diwali.