Farzan Ansari, 13, was good in studies and an expert in fixing snags in mobile phones, family members said.
The teenager had recently asked his father for a laptop, said a relative standing outside the two-storey building that the family shared with many others in a lane off Raja Raj Narayan Street in north Kolkata’s Narkeldanga.
Farzan, 13, a Class VI student at Momin High School in the neighbourhood, wrote the first paper in the term exams that started on Saturday.
After coming back from school he went to his tuition class, which was close to his house.
“He returned from tuition, kept his bag and stepped out to go to the community toilet.
He got electrocuted on his way to the toilet,” said Sheikh Iqbal, a relative of the Ansaris.
Mohammad Wasim, a resident of the slum where the Ansaris live, said the lane leading to the toilet was waterlogged.
The boy was walking along the edge of the lane when he tripped.
“I saw from a distance that he was standing very close to the pole, almost touching it. Then he slumped,” Wasim recounted.
“Farzan’s parents tried to pull him away. But as soon as they touched the boy, they were thrown back by the current.”
When everyone failed to pull the boy to safety, some people used bamboo poles to pull him away.
“The boy then got stuck between the pole and the wall of the house behind it, which is why we could not pull him away. By the time we managed to do that, he was lifeless,” said Mohammad Wasi, another resident of the slum.
Farzan’s father, Fakruddin Ansari, 48, has been working as a car mechanic in Saudi Arabia for four years.
He came to Kolkata about 20 days back on a four-month holiday.
The boy’s mother, Firdaus Ansari, is a homemaker.
The couple has a younger boy, who is now in Class IV, said Iqbal, the relative of the family.
“Farzan had asked his father for a laptop and Fakruddin had promised to buy him one. I cannot even imagine how his parents would deal with this loss,” said Iqbal.
Friends of Farzan remembered him as a quiet boy who did not venture out of his home frequently.
“He was a nice and quiet boy. He did not come out of his home very often.
We went to school together on Saturday and also came back together,” recounted Mohammad Asif Ali, a Class VIII student in the same school where Farzan studied.
