Excelsior Correspondent
MENDHAR, July 10: The Eid celebrations in Mendhar town were today turned into mourning after the dead bodies of two minor girls, who were drowned in local river near Dakki bridge last evening were recovered today from Chhajjla area.
While a minor boy was rescued, his minor sister and another minor girl had drowned in Mendhar river near Dakki bridge, just adjacent to Stadium at around 5.40 pm on Saturday. The family members, relatives, local youth besides police and Army men continued search operation till 11 pm last night but the bodies of the girls could not be traced. Even an Army officer was closely monitoring the operation with his jawans. A Health Department team with an ambulance was also kept stand by at the site.
Today morning around 7 am the search operation was resumed again and the bodies of the minor girls were later recovered about 4 kms down stream the Mendhar river near a bridge at Chhajjla at around 9 am. The bodies were then shifted to Mendhar by police and locals. A large gathering of people from town came out from their houses as the news of recovery of dead bodies of the girls reached Dakki village and Mendhar town.
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The celebrations of Eid turned into the mourning as this news in the entire town spread. The people in large number reached to offer special prayers for the peace to the departed souls. Many of them could not stop their tears while seeing wailing parents and relatives of the deceased girls.
The deceased have been identified as Aila Khan (12), daughter of Liyakat Ali, resident of Balnoi, at present Dhakki in Mendhar and Rifat Khan (8), daughter of Mohammed Sarfaraz, resident of Ghani, at present Dhakki in Mendhar. The bodies were handed over to their families after post-mortem and then were sent to their native villages for burial.
The father of the deceased has accused the local and district administration of negligence. He said that today is Eid and we had to sacrifice, but today our daughters were sacrificed because of slackness on the part of administration. He said when this accident happened no one from administration reached there for one and half hours after that the police arrived and they started the search operation. They kept telling that their divers were coming but no one reached there. A local JCB was hired for search by relatives. The family thanked the Indian Army and said that when the army came to know, they stayed with them till late night and morning again they came out for search operation. Even the local administration failed to arrange an oxygen cylinder for the divers.
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