New Delhi, Aug. 26 -- For 75 hours, Avadesh Kumar and Anita Devi waited beside an open drain in Jasola, through rain and sun, hunger and thirst, hoping against hope that rescuers would pull out their son Mithun alive. The 15-year-old boy fell into the uncovered drain on Saturday morning while trying to retrieve a kite. At one point, Kumar started clearing through the mounds of waste with his bare hands and tried to dive into the drain to find him. Their hopes crumbled on Tuesday afternoon, when disaster response forces found his body 500m downstream, caught in a pile of garbage in the drain, below the Shaheen Bagh Metro station. "We lost our son due to the government's apathy towards the basic safety and security compromises poor people like us face every day," said 34-year-old Devi, who works as a domestic help in the neighbourhood. Mithun, who was in Class 8 in a civic school, is survived by his parents and three siblings, aged eight, 12 and 17. "The boy could not be traced because the water was flowing rapidly in the drain," said deputy commissioner of police (southeast) Vineet Kumar. He said the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) joined the operation around 4pm on Saturday and added that operations continued throughout, except at night. A video clip of Kumar, who cleans sewers for a living, sitting by the drain and ploughing through the garbage with his hands went viral on social media. The reception to that video, said Kumar, forced the Delhi government and civic authorities to take the search seriously. Kumar said he was ready to jump into the drain. "I don't know how to swim, but I was still ready to go into the drain and rescue him. Eight to 10 people, including my relatives and neighbours, were also ready. But the police did not allow it, saying it was risky. They even used force to disperse us when we insisted. My son may have been found earlier, had the rescue teams made serious efforts," said Kumar. The family and some local residents even protested against the alleged inaction on Sunday. A senior police officer, who asked not to be named, said the police and other authorities were present at the rescue site since they were informed about the incident and made their best efforts to retrieve the boy's body. "The search and rescue operation was full of challenges. The flow of water made it impossible to remain at one point and find the body. The drain is full of sludge, garbage and pipes that hampered the search. Also, there was no direct way for earthmovers to reach the drain. The machines first created a path for themselves and then went closer to the drain to remove the garbage and finally find the body," added the officer....