3 children drown in stagnant water of abandoned mine in Palamu

Three children drowned in stagnant water at an abandoned graphite mine in Jharkhand's Palamu district on Sunday, police said.

Four children, aged between 10 and 12, went to take bath in the abandoned mine in Satbarwa police station area in the afternoon, they said.

As one of the children started drowning, two others jumped in to save him and all of them drowned, police said.

The diseased were identified as Aman, Afsar and Akhtar -- residents of Gora village.

''The bodies of all three children were recovered with the help of local divers and sent for postmortem at Medinirai Medical College and Hospital,'' superintendent of police Chandan Kumar Sinha told PTI.

One of the children, who survived, informed the villagers, following which the bodies were found, he said.

Chief Minister Hemant Soren condoled the deaths.

Parts of Jharkhand have been lashed by heavy rains, leading to the stagnation of water in the mine.