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Three children, including a pair of siblings, died in two separate incidents, drowning in lakes near Vaniyambadi and Polur towns of Tirupattur and Tiruvannamalai districts respectively.
Police said the deceased were identified as M. Jothika (8) and her brother M. Jothi (7), and S. Hrithikroshan (4). The siblings were the children of agricultural labourer S. Murugan (37) and his wife M. Devi (32), residents of Kothakottai village near Vaniyambadi town in Tirupattur. Jothika and her brother had gone to a nearby lake to give a bath to their pet dog, when they slipped and fell into the lake.
As the children had gone missing for a long time, Murugan and his wife went in search of them and found the pet dog near the lake. Along with other residents, they alerted the Vaniyambadi Taluk police and firefighters, who recovered the bodies from the lake. The bodies were sent to the Government Taluk Hospital in Vaniyambadi for post-mortems. A case has been registered.
In another incident, S. Hrithikroshan, a resident of Kottamedu village near Polar town in Tiruvannamalai, followed his grandfather, K. Shankar (62), who went fishing at a nearby lake. Shankar was not aware that his grandson had followed him to the lake and was busy fishing. The boy stumbled and fell into the lake. Shankar heard the sound of the boy falling into the lake and pulled him out. The boy was rushed to the Government Medical College in Vellore where doctors pronounced him dead on arrival. A case has been registered by Kannamangalam police. A probe is underway, police said.
