Boy dies while playing, juvenile booked

On March 8, a 15-year-old boy died after his friend hit him with a ball while playing lagori, a local game involving a ball and a pile of stones. The teenager fell and hit his head on a stone.

After the incident, friends of the victim told the boy’s father that he accidentally slipped and fell from the bicycle.

Jalahalli police had registered a case of unnatural death. But, as the postmortem report came on June 3, the father filed a complaint against the friend who threw the ball at the teen.

The postmortem report said the victim died of a blunt injury to the head, not ‘after falling from a bicycle’, as claimed earlier. Hemanth R, son of Ravi Kumar S, a resident of Provident Fund Employees Quarters near Jalahalli was attending ninth grade. On March 8, he had gone to a private tuition at Sharadamba Nagar. Around 6.30 pm, during a game of lagori, one of his friends hit him with a tennis ball.

Hemanth fell on the ground and became unconscious. Passersby rushed him to the M S Ramaiah Hospital, but he was declared brought dead. Ravi Kumar visited the hospital around 8.30 pm and found just minor scratches on Hemanth’s right eyebrow.

The police have booked the juvenile who threw the ball at the deceased under IPC section 304 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder). He is yet to be arrested. According to the police, both were close friends. Hemanth was anemic from childhood and was under treatment. This was not known to many.