Three children ‘drown’ in drum on vacant plot in Gzb
Three minors, including a girl, mysteriously died after allegedly drowning in a plastic drum at a vacant plot in Tulsi Niketan locality in Sahibabad late on Monday evening.
The deaths have baffled the police, which said that it will investigate how all three children downed in a single drum and their bodies were found with heads down. They are, however, waiting for the postmortem report.
The police have called in forensic experts to undertake reconstruction of the sequence of events that led to the deaths.
The two deceased boys were identified as Nimai and Azan, aged one and half years and four years, respectively, both children of one Jiyaluddin. The third deceased was identified as five-year-old Salma, daughter of one Abdul. The three children belonged to two families that lived near the site of the incident. The families claimed that the children had gone to plot to play on Monday evening.
Police sources said that the families of the victims arrived at Tulsi Niketan police-post around 6.30pm and informed officials about the missing children.
“Late in the evening, an old woman saw the drum and an inverted bucket close to each other. When she peeped in, she found bodies of the three children. The plot is near a residential area and we have ordered a post-mortem to find out the cause of the death. According to initial investigation, it seems that the children climbed into the drum by stepping on to the bucket and entered the drum to bathe,” said Deepak Kumar, senior superintendent of police, Ghaziabad.
The plot belongs to a scrap dealer, Akbar.
“We don’t suspect foul play because the plot is next to a residential area and not in an isolated location. The bodies had no external injuries to suspect any foul play. Still, the postmortem will bring forward more details,” he added.
Kumar and other senior officials visited the spot and enquired about the incident from locals and family members of the deceased, who work as labourers.
As per police sources, the drum had a 200 litres storage capacity and was nearly half filled when the kids drowned.
Locals said the children left their homes around 3pm.
The minor girl studied in Class I and had left her home for tuition.