Four children drown in village pond in Gujarat’s Kutch district; one missing

Bhuj: Four children, aged between 8 and 14, drowned in a village pond in Anjar taluka of Gujarat’s Kutch district on Saturday afternoon, while another minor is missing, police said.

“The children had gone to graze their cattle and bathe in the pond near Bhavanipar when the incident occurred,” the official from Dudhai police station said.

When the minors did not return home till evening, their families went looking for them and subsequently alerted the authorities. A rescue team then retrieved the bodies of four of them – Ismael (8), Umar (11), Mustaq (14) and Asfaq (9) – from the pond.

A search is underway for Zahid (11), who is missing, he said.

The bodies have been shifted to a government hospital in Anjar for postmortem, he added.