C’garh: Four children killed in lightning strike in Jashpur district

Four children, two of them siblings, were allegedly killed in a lightning strike at a village in Chhattisgarh's Jashpur district, police said on Tuesday.

The incident took place in Pahad Toli village under Narayanpur police station limits of the district, located around 400 km away from capital Raipur, on Monday, an official said.

“While bodies of Rajkumari (3) and Anuj (5), were found in a field on the banks of a dam in the outskirts of the village, late on Monday evening, Akash (7) and Sundari (4) were fished out from the dam on Tuesday morning,” the official said.

The children had gone to play near the dam and when they did not return home in the evening, their families started looking for them, he said, adding that Rajkumari and Akash were siblings.

When the families spotted bodies of two children near the dam, they alerted the police, following which a search was launched for the other two, he said.

Bodies of the other two children were fished out from the dam by divers, the official said.

Prima facie, it seems like the children were playing on the banks of the dam and after lightning struck them two died on the spot, while the others fell into the water, he said.

The bodies have been sent for post-mortem and a case has been registered in this connection, the official added.