Police await FSL report to ascertain cause of death of two-and-a-half-year-old in Prakasam district

Police are waiting for the Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) report to ascertain the cause of death of a two-and-a-half-year-old boy, whose body was found on Thursday after three days of missing from an anganwadi centre at Lingojipalli village of Cumbum mandal in Prakasam district.

According to the police, the boy had been identified as Podili Lakshit from Hyderabad. A couple of months back, he came to his grandfather’s house in Gotlagattu along with his mother P. Surekha, who was pregnant at that time and delivered a baby girl 40 days ago. The boy was going to the anganwadi centre daily but he was not enrolled as a student, because the family was planning to go back to Hyderabad within the next few days. Meanwhile, he went missing from the anganwadi centre on July 8 (Tuesday) at around 11.30 a.m.

When his mother asked about him to the anganwadi staff by 1.30 p.m., they informed her that he had already left. With the help of neighbours, she searched for him around the centre but in vain. She complained to the police and they started looking for him from 3 p.m. onwards. Speaking to The Hindu, Superintendent of Police A. R. Damodar said that 10 teams were deployed to find the boy on Wednesday. Despite using drones and the dog squad, they couldn’t trace the boy within a four-kilometre radius of the anganwadi centre.

With a clue given by another boy in the village, the police traced the slippers of the boy near a canal and finally found his body in the bushes almost five kilometres away from the centre on Thursday morning. There were no injury marks on his body except the rashes on his legs. “Doctors were brought to the spot to conduct a post-mortem. They have submitted the details to the Regional FSL and the reports are yet to come. The FSL report is expected in 10 days. Once it comes, we could know the actual cause of death,” the Investigation Officer said.

A case was registered under Section 194 (suspicious death) of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS) and the investigation is on. The police officials are exploring all possible reasons behind his death.