Balasore: Two minor girls reportedly drowned while trying to collect miniature boats from a pond during “Boita Bandana” ritual on the auspicious occasion of Kartika Purnima in Odisha’s Balasore district on Friday.
According to sources, the villagers of Panisapada under Basta police station in the district had gone to float miniature boats in the village pond to celebrate the festival in the morning. The minor daughters of Dillip Kumar Das and Manas Nanda also accompanied their families to the pond.
While the villagers were busy in performing the rituals in the pond, the two girls, who were friends, were playing on its banks. One girl was 3 years old and the other 5 years.
After floating the miniature boats in the pond, the villagers returned to their homes. Around noon, the families came to know that the girls were missing and started searching for them. After failing to trace them, they searched the pond by casting nets.
The two minor girls were found drowned by the villagers in the afternoon. They rushed the girls to the local hospital. But the doctors in the hospital declared them brought dead.
On being informed, police went to the hospital and sent the bodies for post-mortem. The villagers suspected that the girls might have slipped into deep water and drowned while trying to collect the boats from inside the pond.