2 boys drown in open water tank at public garden in Mumbai

The police said the parents reported the matter at the Matunga police station at around 1.30 pm on Sunday.

Senior police inspector Deepak Chavan said, “We registered a case of kidnapping as two minor children were missing. Our teams were simultaneously dispatched to find them. We even scrutinised the CCTV footage but we could not locate the two children.”

The children were eventually found at around 8 am on Monday inside the water tank at the public garden.”Everyone knew that they had gone to play in the garden. But the parents and the locals suspected they must have gone near the water tank and started looking for them inside it. With the help of a torch, we managed to see their bodies,” an officer added.

The Matunga police and the RAK Marg police were subsequently informed. The children were taken out and rushed to a hospital, where they were declared dead before admission.The RAK Marg police registered an accidental death report.

A senior police officer added, “The water tank lids were missing, and the open area was instead covered by a thin layer of plastic, so the two children could not figure out that it was an open manhole. They must have walked over it without noticing and fell inside the water tank.”

The RAK Marg police added that they are probing to ascertain whether anyone’s negligence had caused the deaths.