Three minor girls drown in Uran pond, mother rescued

Navi Mumbai: Three minor girls, including two siblings and their neighbour, drowned while bathing at a pond in Jasai village, Uran taluka, on Saturday around 2.30 pm. The mother of the siblings was rescued by a local villager.

The deceased siblings were identified as Rehana Ramzan Parveen (8) and Raveena Ramzan Parveen (7), the daughters of Shakala Mohammed Ramzan Khadim Mansoori (35), whom the girls accompanied to the pond along with Soumya Kanhaiya Prajapati (13), the daughter of their neighbour Kanhaiya Setu Kumar Prajapati. They resided in a chawl in Jasai village. Uran police have registered an accidental death report.

Hanif Mulani, senior inspector of Uran, informed that, on Saturday around 11 am, the woman, Shakala Mansoori, went to the pond behind the temple to wash clothes. After returning home, as there was no water supply in the chawl for the past two days, around 2.30 pm, she took along her two daughters and her neighbour's daughter for bathing in the pond. After the woman and three girls entered the pond, they could not fathom the depth of the pond and gasped for breath. A villager, Mohammad Munna Qureshi, while grazing his goats near the pond, heard the woman's shouts for help, but he could not save her as he did not know how to swim. He alerted a local villager, Prashant Mhatre (38), who was passing by. Mhatre immediately dived into the pond and brought the woman ashore. As she told him that her two daughters and another girl were bathing with her and they could not be seen in the pond, Mhatre searched for them underwater and brought the three girls to the shore, but they were unconscious due to intake of pond water through the nose and mouth. The entire incident occurred within two minutes.

API Mulani said, "The three girls were rushed to Indira Gandhi Rural Govt Hospital in Uran, where the doctors declared them brought dead. After completing the formalities at the hospital, the bodies of the three girls were handed over to their parents for conducting their final rites."