NASHIK: An eight-month-old boy died of suffocation after swallowing a rubber balloon here, a police official said today.
The infant was playing in his house at Hanuman Nagar in the city's Cidco locality yesterday when he picked up the balloon lying on the floor and swallowed it, an official at Ambad police station said.
The child started choking following which his parents rushed him to a private hospital. The authorities there suggested the boy's father to shift him to the civil hospital where doctors declared him dead, he said.
After the child swallowed the balloon, it slipped into his wind pipe and he died of suffocation, Dr Anand Pawar, the medical officer of Nashik civil hospital, said.
The Ambad police registered a case of accidental death, the police official said.
The child's father hails from Allahabad in Uttar Pradesh. He worked as a labourer in Nashik where he was staying with his family, he added.