TIRUVANNAMALAI: Four children drowned while swimming in a pond at Arani on Tuesday evening.
Police identified the deceased as V Dhanushka (5) and V Karthiga (10) both siblings, and K Mohan (12) and his sister K Varsha (8). Families of the children reside in Adaiyapalam panchayat and their parents are employed as daily wage workers at a nearby farm.
According to sources, Mohan invited his sister and the other two children from the neighbourhood to join him for a swim in a pond located about 100 metres from their houses on Tuesday evening. The children, none of whom knew swimming, entered the deep pond without informing their parents and drowned.
When the children did not return home, their parents began searching for them. Unable to locate the children, they lodged a complaint at the Arani taluk police station. Police initiated a search and found the children's bodies in the nearby pond. The bodies were sent to Arani government hospital for postmortem.