Dangerous sport: Eight-year-old dies trying to catch stray kite

Father says Musa, his two brothers occasionally flew kites on Sundays.

GUJRANWALA: An eight-year-old child fell off the roof of his three-storey house and died on Sunday trying to catch a stray kite passing over the house in Deganwala area in Gujranwala’s Walled City.

The child, identified as Muhammad Musa, was accompanied by his two elder brothers on the rooftop where they were flying kites, according to the family.

His father, Muhammad Ramazan, a daily-wage labourer, said his children occasionally flew kites from the roof of their house on Sundays. He said he let them engage in the activity to prevent them from leaving home. “I thought this way my children would stay safe and away from bad company,” he said.

He quoted Musa’s elder brothers as saying that he fell off the roof while trying to jump over to a house across a three-foot wide street. The father said Musa had probably seen his brothers do so to catch stray kites.

The child was laid to rest on Sunday and the family refused to lodge a complaint, Kotwali station house officer Mudassar Butt told The Tribune. He denied that anyone in his area had been flying kites and speculated that the stray kite must have come over from Model Town, which falls in a different police station’s jurisdiction. He said there had been no violation of the ban on kite flying and selling in his area.

A 13-year-old boy, Arsalan, was arrested on violating the kite flying ban by Model Town police about three weeks ago. The child was jailed for a night and released the next morning on the directive of a sessions judge.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 5^th, 2012.