A three-year-old boy’s body was recovered from the manhole, after a 15-hour-long operation from Karachi’s Nipa Flyover, Express Tribune reported. The boy fell into an open manhole while returning with his father from shopping at 11 pm on Sunday. The KMS rescue team recovered the lifeless body of the child today, around 1 kilometre away from where he fell. Identified as Ibrahim, the child was handed over to his grandfather, a resident of Shah Faisal Colony.
The family blames the government for negligence, as the operation faced several delays due to a lack of heavy machinery, no pipeline layouts and sewage maps. This led the public to conduct a self-led rescue operation, during which they arranged for the machinery and continued searching for the child with community help.
The video of the distressed mother crying for help went viral instantly. Activist Jahanzeb Wisa posted on X:
#Urgent: “For God’s sake, save my child.”
This is the heartbreaking cry of a mother whose child has fallen into a military manhole in Karachi, Pakistan. She is weeping intensely, completely helpless and devastated. pic.twitter.com/bFoAuxg1Mw— Jahanzeb Wisa (@JahanzebWesa) December 1, 2025
Protests are now being held at the Nipa Flyover, where protesters have blocked roads, pelting stones and burning tyres. The enraged public has damaged media vans, and the police are diverting traffic to nearby roads. Reactions are also coming on social media, where people call out the government’s negligence in a sensitive case and call it tragic.
Actor Ayesha Omar posted an Instagram story and said:
Actor Mishi Khan also took to Instagram to question where the budget for Karachi’s infrastructure goes and stated that the city looks like a war-torn area. She posted:
View this post on Instagram
Journalist, Waseem Badami, also joined in to question that Karachi, being one of the biggest cities in this day and age, is suffering from such an issue where manholes are not covered, leading to the deaths of children. The disappointed activist said that the government will come to defend this incident by saying that accidents happen in first-world countries as well. He posted on Instagram:
View this post on Instagram
Shedding light on how the community conducted the search on their own, a netizen wrote:
They paid 15,000 rupees for diesel, and started the search privately.
This is Karachi the city that generates 60% of this country’s revenue yet the government can’t even respond to a manhole emergency.
— akrama (@AkramaMianoor) December 1, 2025
