Man falls in drain, comes out of connecting canal alive
The man who went missing after falling into a sewerage drain in Dhaka's Pallabi area yesterday was found alive in a canal two kilometres away.
Manik Miah (45), a tea-shop owner, is currently admitted to Shaheed Suhrawardy Medical College Hospital after receiving primary treatment from Islami Bank Hospital in Mipur, said Shakhawat Nomani, an on-duty doctor of the hospital.
Locals said he was sitting on a bypass over the Kalshi canal before falling into the water.
Around 9am, eyewitness Md Liton, manager of a nearby restaurant, heard a sound from the canal and found the man swimming in its pitch-black water.
"We asked him to get out of the water and tried to help, but he did not listen and kept swimming… at one stage, he drowned in the swirling water and vanished," he said.
Along with the sewerage water, he had passed on to the canal near Kalshi New Road.
Witnesses said they saw him dropping out into the canal through a pipe. He later swum to the shore around 9:35am.
Meanwhile, rescuers of Fire Service and Civil Defense began searching for him at the drain he fell into. They kept this up for six hours, and only stopped upon coming to know he had surfaced on the bank of the New Road canal.
Fire service personnel later went there and found him lying in a helpless state around 3pm.
Doctors at Islami Bank Hospital said they did not find any injury on his body. However, he was physically weak. He was taken to Suhrawardy hospital by his son, Md Reaz (23).
Speaking to this correspondent, Reaz said his father had been anxious over some unknown reasons for the last couple of days.
Around Tuesday noon, he told Reaz to take over their tea shop at Mirpur 12 -- within two kilometres of the Kalshi canal -- and left. However, he did not come back for the next two nights.
The family -- who live in Pallabi's Shujatnagar -- later filed a general diary with Pallabi Police Station, before he was discovered yesterday afternoon.
Reaz told this correspondent that upon reuniting with Manik, he told him that he fell into the Kalshi canal and tried to swim ashore by himself, but was pulled into the drain.
He spent around forty minutes in the drain, bumping all around and trying to survive by swimming with all his might, before popping out of a pipe in the New Road canal.
Meanwhile, locals and fire service officials said though the drain at Kalshi canal is open, the waterbody is protected by a boundary and is visible enough for locals to be mindful of it.
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