Sitamarhi: A quiet afternoon in the village of Kanchanpur in Sitamarhi district turned into a heartbreaking tragedy on Wednesday when five young girls drowned in a pond while collecting soil—three of them losing their lives.
The incident occurred around 3.30pm in Pachda Nimahi Panchayat under Bajpatti police station. According to police and local accounts, the girls had gone to the village pond for a routine task—gathering soil for household use—when eight-year-old Nandini Kumari slipped into deeper water. In a desperate attempt to save her, the other four girls followed, only to be pulled into the same watery trap.
Two of the girls, identified as Ritu and Priyanshi Kumari, managed to struggle back to the bank. Local villagers, alerted by their cries, rushed to the scene and, with the help of divers, retrieved the bodies of the three who had drowned.
The deceased have been named as Nandini Kumari (8), daughter of Ravindra Rai; Aarti Kumari (13), daughter of Uma Rai; and Sudha Kumari (9), daughter of Mithun Rai—all residents of the same village. Their bodies have been sent to Sitamarhi Sadar Hospital for postmortem.
Inspector Pankaj Kumar of Bajpatti police station confirmed the sequence of events, stating that the girls died while trying to save one another. “The tragedy unfolded in a matter of minutes,” he said. “It is a painful reminder of how a moment of misstep can turn fatal.”
As news of the incident spread, grief gripped the village. Relatives of the deceased were inconsolable, and a pall of mourning hung over Kanchanpur, where the deaths of three children from the same neighbourhood have left the community shaken.
