KOLLAM: An entire village searched for her a day and night. Their hearts beat faster as every hour passed, but they did not give up. Police officers and experts led them from the front and prayers of lakhs of people gave them the strength to go on, but destiny had other plans. D Devanandha, the seven- year-old girl who went missing from her house at Elavoor on Thursday morning, was found dead in the nearby Pallimon River on Friday.
A police officer found the body floating in the river around 7am, some 200 metres away from her house, with her face downwards and hair tangled in a stick stuck in mud. Her shawl was recovered from a nearby makeshift bridge. Autopsy report ruled out infliction of violence or injury on her body and confirmed that the death was due to drowning.
There was mud and clay in her respiratory system and stomach. The report also said the death happened before Thursday noon itself, which meant, within one hour after she went missing at 10.30am. Devanandha’s body was kept first at her mother’s home in Elavoor and then at her school Saraswathy Vidyanikethan at Vakkanadu for public to pay homage.
After her mother Dhanya and father Pradeep Kumar — who reached from Muscat on Friday — confirmed their daughter’s identity, her body was taken to Thiruvananthapuram Medical College around 10am for postmortem examination. And she was laid to rest in the evening on the premises of her father’s house at Kudavattoor in Kottarakkara amid uncontrolled sobs.
Neighbours have doubts
● Devanandha had gone missing from her house at 10.30 am on Thursday
● Autopsy says girl drowned within an hour
● Neighbours sure the girl wouldn’t go to river alone