2 kids drown, another feared dead in Madhya Pradesh

JABALPUR: Two girls drowned in a canal and a third is missing, feared dead, in MP’s Katni district.

The missing girl, an eight-year-old, may have jumped into the water to save the other two girls, one of whom was her elder sister, say police.

Four girls -- Siddhi Patel, 12, her sister Manvi, 8, and their friends Ananya Patel, 6, and Aanshik Patel, 14 – had gone to bathe in a canal in Umariyapan village, around 40km from Katni district headquarters and 370km from Bhopal, on Saturday.

They bathed Manvi first and sat her on the canal bank after which the other three went back into the water, said SP Abhijeet Ranjan. Siddhi and Aanshik slipped into deeper water and started thrashing about in panic. Realising that they were drowning, six-year-old Ananya sprinted back to the village to get help. When a rescue party and police arrived on the scene, they found Manvi was missing too.