Residents: Lift Entrapment Points to Larger Issues at India Towers

Residents of an affordable housing complex in Gurugram in northern India say the entrapment of a 6-year-old boy in a lift on September 15 points to larger elevator maintenance issues at the complex, which consists of 15 towers housing approximately 1,200 families, The Times of India reports. Family members of the child said he went out to play in the evening, and that they began searching for him after several hours. The parents opened a lift shaft at around 9:30 p.m. and heard the boy whimpering, stuck in an elevator between the third and fourth floors. The father said the lift’s emergency stop button was not working, and that his son became trapped trying to travel to the family’s seventh-floor residence. He was released at approximately 10:30 p.m. after the lift had been reset. A residents’ representative said homeowners pay a maintenance fee to maintain services such as lifts, but “the elevators in our society are not maintained properly.” A spokesman for the developer said it is in compliance with elevator maintenance requirements and is now asking its guards to check the elevators at the complex every hour.