Two small children were choked to death in Delhi after their parents unknowingly locked them up inside a car parked outside their house.
Hyderabad: 2-year-old suffocates to death in car; parents overlook lodging police complaint
The incident took place in Delhi's Ranhola area on Tuesday, when Sonu (4) and Raj (5) got inside the car which the latter's father Raju, a cab driver, had parked outside their residence.
According to the police, the children were locked in the vehicle for more than seven hours and may have stifled to death due to accumulation of carbon monoxide in the vehicle.
Here's what happened
Raju had forgotten to lock the car when he parked it outside the house.The children apparently got inside the vehicle to play.
The older one of the two had come to visit Sonu on the occasion of Diwali. The victims' family members assumed that the kids were playing outside and went for a siesta.
However, at 1:15 pm, Raju realised that he hadn't locked the car.
So he went near the window and used the remote key to centrally lock the Maruti Swift car. The children continued to play with a few toy cars in the back seat of the vehicle, unaware of the danger.
When the boys did not return home after a while, the family started looking for them.
Unfortunately, the family got into another Maruti Swift car parked beside the vehicle in which the children had been accidentally locked up, and went in search for the children in the nearby areas.
As they failed to trace the children after a lapse of four hours, the parents filed a complaint at around 7 pm at the Ranhola police station.
"We asked the family members for the pictures of the two boys and immediately formed a team to look for them," DCP (outer) Pankaj Kumar was quoted as saying by the Times of India.
Meanwhile, Raju decided to go back home for the other car so that they could use it to cover other areas.
It was then that the family found the boys inside the car at around 8:00 pm.
"Both Sonu and Raj were lying in the back seat with burn injuries all over their bodies. They were holding hands when we found them," police quoted Raju as saying.
The family rushed the children to a nearby hospital in the same car but the doctors declared them brought dead.
Parents blame themselves
The family of the boys are inconsolable and feel that it was because of them that the children died.
"My children have died. Nobody in the family can come to terms with it. They died due to our negligence and we will always regret it," Manoj, the boys' uncle, told TOI.
Though the police had initially registered a case under IPC Section 363 (punishment for kidnapping) when the parents could not find the child, they have not recorded any separate case.
