A PALL of gloom descended in Sagar district after nine children met untimely death after a wall collapsed at Shahpur on Sunday morning. Two children were injured and have been admitted in hospital. The accident spot was heartrending as people were screaming for help. Locals rushed in to help and started clearing the rubbles to rescue the trapped children. Soon a JCB was called to remove the debris. As per the information, on Sunday morning at around 10 am, at Hardol temple in Shahpur, Bhagwat Katha and making of ‘Parthiv Shivling’ rituals were being conducted. Being Sunday, a large number of children gathered at the spot for participating in the rituals. When the children were busy in making shivling, suddenly wall of an old ‘kaccha’ house situated adjacent to the temple premises collapsed and it fell on the children. They started screaming for help. Nine children died on the spot. The rescue operation was initiated immediately and rubbles was cleared to take out the trapped children.

 

The bodies of the dead children were taken to district hospital . Local MLA Gopal Bhargava, officers reached the spot and took stock of the rescue operation. The nine children who died in the mishap have been identified as Divyansh Nilesh Sahu,VanshYashwant Lodhi, Nitesh Kamlesh Patel, Dhurv Jagdeesh Yadav, Parv Phool Vishwakarma, Devraj Govind Sahu, Ashutosh Maan Singh Prajapati, Prince Ashok Sahu, Hemant Bhure. All the deceased children are between age group of 5-14 years. The injured are Sumit Prajapati and Khushboo. Locals informed that it was a 50-years-old house and due to incessant rains that lashed the city for the past so many days, the walls had become weak and hence it collapsed. Expressing grief, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in a post on X, said, "The incident caused by the wall collapse in Sagar, Madhya Pradesh is heart-breaking.” Chief Minister Dr Mohan Yadav expressed profound grief over the untimely death of the children in Sagar district.The Chief Minister said, “It is a matter of pain that such incidents have happened after continuous efforts to take precautions during the rainy season. The State Government has also directed the disaster teams to remain active to deal with the situations of excessive rainfall in the districts.” Dr Yadav has directed the Sagar district administration toprovidefinancialassistance of Rs 4 lakh each to the affected families and to provide proper treatment to the children injured in the accident.