Indore (Madhya Pradesh): The tragic death of a missing six-year-old specially-abled girl sent shockwaves through the city on Monday. The girl was missing for the last two days and was found dead in a drain around 250 metres away from her house under the Rajendra Nagar police station's jurisdiction.
Initially, locals raised suspicions about her death, but the short post-mortem report revealed that the girl had died due to drowning. Doctors ruled out foul play as there were no injuries on her body. Her father believed that she might have climbed onto a cemented pole above the drain and accidentally fell into it.
Rajendra Nagar police station in-charge Neeraj Birthare said the deceased was identified as Lakshita, daughter of Jeevan Meena, a resident of Shiv Sagar Colony, Bijalpur. She went missing from outside her house on Saturday afternoon.
The police reviewed CCTV footage that showed the girl running alone on the street and heading toward the garden. Additional DCP Alok Kumar Sharma said that they suspected she might have fallen into the drain, which lacks a boundary wall and has slopes.
A search operation using excavators was launched and as water was being drained out, the girl’s leg was visible in the bucket of the machine’s arm. Her body was sent to the district hospital for a post-mortem which was conducted under video recording. Lakshita’s father is a manager in a pharmaceutical company in Gujarat. She is survived by her parents and an elder brother who studies MBBS in Kazakhstan.
She arrived in city on day of mishap
The girl along with her parents came from Gujarat to her maternal grandparent’s house on Saturday at around 6 am to attend a marriage function. She went missing later that day, around 1:45 pm, after stepping outside her house.
Her father Jeevan said his wife had called him from a beauty parlour and asked him to bring Lakshita to her. However, he got distracted while having lunch and watching a cricket match, during which Lakshita went outside.
She often visited garden with grandfather
Jeevan said they usually kept their door locked since Lakshita was a specially-abled child. He believed that someone might have left the door open. After stepping outside, Lakshita went to a neighbour’s house to play on a swing but was denied entry.
She then headed toward the garden, a place her maternal grandfather often took her for walks. CCTV footage later showed her playing on a swing in the garden before heading toward the drain, where the incident occurred.
