The state’s second capital was stunned after the bodies of three minor kids — who were reportedly ‘missing’ or ‘kidnapped’ since June 17 — were found dead in an abandoned SUV, close to their home in the Farooque Nagar area of the city, police said on Monday.
According to police, the children identified as Afreen Khan, 6, and her cousins — Aliya Khan, 6, and Taufiq Khan, 4 — had gone to play outside their house on Saturday afternoon after lunch.
As they played in the vicinity, they reached the SUV, parked unattended nearby, and entered it to play, but somehow got mysteriously locked in the vehicle, a Ford Ecosport.
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It was only after nearly 30 hours that a local woman complained of a stench emanating from there that locals and police teams rushed there to check the SUV.
They were shaken to find the bodies of the three children piled atop each other, the vehicle’s dusty windshields bearing finger marks of their struggle to come out or draw attention for help.
The bodies were removed from the SUV, and shifted to the Mayo Hospital, the entire operation was videographed and later sent for post-mortem.
The vehicle was later found to be from Jalgaon, but owned by a Nagpur local, and was parked outside a power loom workshop by a garage mechanic in the vicinity.
Following the missing complaint lodged with the Panchpaoli Police Station, different teams of around 200 personnel scanned CCTV footage, launched a door-to-door search in the neighborhood, and a dog squad had also gone there but failed to track the kids.
The locals said that the SUV was usually left unlocked and children often played inside, but this time, the kids may have unwittingly locked it and got trapped.
An official of Panchpaoli Police Station told IANS that the tentative cause of death of the three kids in the autopsy report is cited as ‘suffocation’, probably owing to the intense heat conditions.
The viscera have been preserved for further tests, the final autopsy report is awaited and police have lodged an accidental death report while further investigations are on.
Top officials led by Nagpur Commissioner of Police Amitesh Kumar, Deputy Commissioner of Police M. Sudarshan (Crime), and DCP Gorakh Bhamre (Zonal) are guiding the probe into the case.
The victims’ families hail from Uttar Pradesh and have been working in Nagpur and living in rented homes for the past few years.
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