Udupi (The Hindu): A 30-year-old woman and her five-year-old child were drowned in a stone quarrying pit filled with water at Padualevoor in Alevoor village in Udupi district on Tuesday.

Neelavva had gone to wash clothes at the stone quarrying pit. Her five-year-old son Hanumanth had accompanied her.

She had left the child to play around while she was washing the clothes. The child accidentally slipped into the water in the pit. Neelavva rushed to save her son. But both were drowned. The incident took place around 11.30 a.m.

The local people called the Fire and Emergency Services. However, the two bodies were later recovered from the pit by a team of local divers, led by Ashok, an autorickshaw driver.

The bodies were shifted to the District Government Hospital here for post-mortem. Neelavva belonged to Aihole in Hungund taluk of Bagalkot district. She had married Yammunar, who works as a mason here and is hearing impaired, about nine years ago. Yammunar was inconsolable after learning about the death of his wife and child.

Yammunar and Neelavva had three children, two daughters and a son. Yammunar stayed with his two brothers and their families in a small house on 1.75 cents of land provided by the government at Padualevoor. There are a total of 12 members of the joint family staying in three rooms of the house.

Though hailing from North Karnataka, the family had settled down here for the last 20 years. There are about 70 families of migrant workers in this area. Although stone quarrying was going on at Padualevoor for about four decades, it had stopped in the last couple of years.

A board too had been installed near the pit stating that diving and swimming was prohibited in the pit, which is said to be about 40 ft deep. Some women from these migrant families washed their clothes at this pit. Usually, they went to wash after the men in their houses went to work. Some men also swam in this pit as it was wide, despite the warning on the board against it.