Fifteen hours after she was reported missing, the body of 12-year-old Sumedha Kapuria was found in a lake about two kilometres from her home in Neredmet here on Friday.
On Thursday evening, the Class V student in a private school, had gone cycling in the neighbourhood with her friends before it started pouring in the area. “She left home after informing her father Abhijit. At that time, her mother Sukanya had gone out for some work,” Neredmet inspector A. Narsimha Swamy said.
By the time Sukanya returned home it was raining heavily and Sumedha was not at home. As their daughter did not return home, the couple along with other family members started searching for her in the neighbourhood.
After speaking to other children who already returned home, they came to know that Sumedha went towards the end of the lane on her cycle. They searched in all possible places and her school at Kakatiya Nagar as well, but in vain, Mr. Swamy said.
As the situation was alarming, the family members suspected that the girl was kidnapped and lodged a complaint with the police.
While analysing the video footage of surveillance cameras in the area, police found that the girl was riding the bicycle in her colony and had gone towards an open nala.
Suspecting that the girl could have accidentally fallen in the open drain due to heavy floods last night, the police took up a search operation and found her bicycle at the nala on Friday morning.
Further, the GHMC’s Disaster Response Force personnel excavated the nala with an earthmover, and around 1.30 p.m. they found the girl’s body in Banda Cheruvu, into which the nala joins.
“We suspect that the the girl had accidentally slipped into the nala and got swept away due to heavy downpour,” Mr. Swamy said.
A case was registered and the body was sent to Osmania General Hospital morgue for autopsy.
Later in the day, Malkajgiri MLA Mynampally Hanumantha Rao inspected the area and said that around 300 houses were built by encroaching the nala. “We cannot ask people to vacate their houses in which they are living for more than three decades and all of them are lower middle class families. By next monsoon we will come up with alternate options to control the floods in the nala,” he said.
Mr. Rao said that they will construct a diversion nala under the main road to control the flooding.
