Devananda’s death: Evidence from body sent for forensic tests, says CM

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The investigation team has collected scientific evidences from the body of Devananda, the seven-year-old girl who was found dead in a river adjoining her house at Kollam, and has handed them over for forensic and chemical examinations to ascertain if she was subjected to any kind of physical assault, chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan said in the assembly.
Replying to a submission by opposition leader Ramesh Chennithala, demanding that the government constitute a larger investigation team to probe and find out the truth behind her death, the chief minister said the postmortem certificate has concluded that the findings are consistent with death due to drowning and additional reports will follow after laboratory investigations.
Chennithala said parents and relatives of the child have stated that the child had no habit of going outside the house without informing elders, hence, it cannot be believed that she had gone near the river without anyone’s knowledge and drowned by accident.
The chief minister said that the investigation is still under progress. The place where Devananda drowned has undercurrents, and five people had died at the same spot in the last 10 years, he added.