A three-year-old girl starved to death after being abandoned in a forest by her mother, according to police in Chhattisgarh’s Mungeli district. The toddler’s body was discovered after a four-day search in a jungle in the Lormi region of north Chhattisgarh.
According to a report in TOI, Subdivisional Police Officer Madhuri Dhirahi stated that the child appears to have died due to thirst and starvation. The body was decayed, and there was no sign of an animal attack. Dhirahi suggested that it could potentially be a case of murder, and the police are currently questioning the child’s mother, Sangita Pandram, the sarpanch of Patparha village, located around 385 km north of Raipur and adjacent to the Madhya Pradesh border.
Despite the unnatural death of a child, the police have yet to register a case. According to the police, Sangita left her house with her toddler and elder daughter on May 6 following a quarrel with her husband, Shivram. She claimed she was going to her parents’ place, 25 km away in MP’s Dindori district, but left the little one in the Achanakmar Tiger Reserve. Sangita returned the same night but only with her elder daughter, Anoushka. When questioned about the toddler by her husband and villagers, she claimed to have mistakenly left her near Mailu hills in the Achanakmar forest. Shivram immediately went into the forest with a few villagers to look for the child, but they couldn’t find any sign of her. It was only on May 9 that the stench of decomposition led villagers to her body.
Upon questioning, Sangita claimed that she had left the girl sleeping under a tree and went in search of water but lost her way back and couldn’t find the toddler anywhere. The police stated that they are looking into the mother’s role in the incident.
