Jahangirpuri: Two children drown in drain

Two children, aged 4 and 5 years, drowned in a drain in northwest Delhi’s Jahangirpuri in two separate incidents reported between Friday evening and Saturday morning,

Two children, aged 4 and 5 years, drowned in a drain in northwest Delhi’s Jahangirpuri in two separate incidents reported between Friday evening and Saturday morning, the police said. While the four-year-old girl accidentally fell into the drain and drowned while playing near it, the other child, a boy, had been missing for the past week, they said.

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The police said the girl’s mother was collecting garbage near the drain when she saw her daughter fall into the drain. By the time she raised an alarm and locals rushed to the rescue, the child had died. The family does not suspect any foul play. However, the family members of the five-year-old boy suspect that he was murdered and the killers threw his body in the drain.

Deputy commissioner of police (northwest) Vijayanta Arya said that a case of kidnapping was already registered in connection with the missing boy on the complaint of his family members. Teams had been making efforts to search for him, she said.

The police said that the boy lived with his parents in Jahangirpuri’s jhuggi clusters. His father is a motor mechanic while his mother works as domestic help. On February 8, the child was playing outside his home when he went missing. His family members searched for him in the neighbourhood. When he could not be found, the family approached the police and filed a missing complaint.

“A kidnapping case was registered since the boy was a minor,” a police officer associated with the case said.

After the boy’s family members learnt that a girl’s body was fished out from the drain, they also began searching for him in the drain on Saturday morning. After a couple of hours, they found the boy’s cap in the drain. Later, the boy’s body was also found, the officer said.

“Both the bodies were sent to a nearby hospital for autopsy. Prima facie, no external injury marks were found on the bodies. The autopsy reports will help us ascertain the exact cause of the deaths,” the officer added.