Bhubaneswar, Feb. 4 -- An unusual episode in Uttar Pradesh's Meerut this week has sparked debate on civic neglect and the misuse of emergency services after a woman allegedly misled police and municipal teams to clean a long-neglected open drain.

On Monday, February 2, police received a distress call from a woman who claimed that her child had fallen into a severely clogged open drainage channel in the TP Nagar area. Responding immediately, local police and sanitation workers launched a full-scale search and rescue operation that lasted nearly three hours.

Officials deployed heavy machinery, including JCB excavators, and worked alongside municipal teams to dig through years of accumulated garbage, sludge, and debris in an effort to loca...