Minors drowned, not murdered: Cops

Guwahati: Two minor girls, who were reported missing on Thursday and were suspected to have been murdered, before recovery of their bodies from a pond, actually died due to drowning, police said on Sunday.Addressing the media, Kokrajhar SSP Akshat Garg said, “The post-mortem report shows no suspicious injury was found in the bodies of the deceased. Their lungs were found to be voluminous along with sand particles in the trachea. It clearly indicates that they drowned.”Previously, on Thursday, acting on a missing persons complaint filed by the family members of the girls, police had arrested a manager of the Lalkura tea garden, Golam Mustafa (66), in the Dholmara area of Kokrajhar, and his associate Ejahan Ali (42), for not fencing the pond.The arrested duo was sent to a 14-day judicial custody on Friday on charges of negligence and criminal conspiracy.“Mustafa owns the pond and handles the managerial tasks in the tea garden. Locals said they had been requesting Mustafa for a long time to fence the pond. However, they did not fence the pond despite repeated requests. Therefore, they have been arrested,” Garg said.While one girl studied in Class 9, the other was in Class 8, police said.BJP MLA Sanjay Kishan, who visited the families of the deceased, expressed doubt over the minors’ death.All Adivasi Students’ Association of Assam secretary in-charge of Kokrajhar district, Suniram Tudu, demanded a thorough investigation.