Kaiz with his parents on his birthday last November

Krishnanagar, March 6: A 15-month-old boy died today after he swallowed the cap of a bottle he was playing with.

Kaiz Rezvi, whose father Liaqat Hussein is a doctor at the Dhubulia veterinary hospital in Nadia, was declared dead minutes after being admitted to the Saktinagar district hospital, about 65km from Calcutta.

Liaqat had rented a flat here about a year-and-a-half back after moving from Assam with wife Rashida, a lawyer. He had participated in last month’s culling operations in Bengal’s bird flu-hit districts.

Rashida, 24, was busy in the kitchen this morning while 14-year-old Gulbahar Sheikh — a domestic help the couple had brought from Assam — watched over her son. Gulbahar had gone to the toilet while Kaiz was playing with the bottle.

Around noon, Rashida felt a tug at her sari.

“I could not understand what my son was trying to tell me. Then he started crying and gasping for breath. I realised something serious had happened and cried for help,” she said.

Landlord Mohan Lal Sarkar, who lives on the first floor, heard Rashida. “I came down and saw Kaiz wheezing and breathless. When he tried to speak, there was a whistling sound coming from his throat that made us suspect he had swallowed something and it was stuck in his throat. Later, we found the bottle on the floor without the cap,” Sarkar said.

Rashida rushed to a neighbourhood maternity clinic with Kaiz. He was shifted to the Saktinagar hospital later.

Doctors decided to remove the cap but Kaiz died before the operation could begin. “The boy breathed his last the moment he was laid on the operation table. The cap had blocked the air passage to his lungs,” hospital superintendent Tapas Nandi said.

Neighbours thronged the Husseins’ home to console the young couple. Priyanka Biswas, 13, who used to play with the boy, fainted when his body was brought home.