INDIA –Tragedy struck in India when a five-year-old boy diagnosed with terminal cancer was drowned as his family tried to cure him with water from the River Ganges.
The Full Gist
Police say the child, who had leukemia, died after his parents submerged him in the river flowing through northern India in a superstitious bid to cure him.
The family had reportedly travelled from their home in Delhi to Haridwar on Tuesday to perform the ceremony and pray for the unnamed victim.
Their taxi driver said the child was accompanied by his parents and a female relative identified as his aunt by local media.
Doctors ‘gave up’ Already
The driver said the boy looked ‘extremely unwell’ and that doctors in the capital had given up on trying to save him – leading the family to take more desperate measures.
Submersion Went Wrong
Video shared locally showed the parents later chanting prayers as his ‘aunt’ held him under the water.
Bystanders reportedly told the family to stop as they continued to hold the boy under the water, considered sacred to Hindus.
Some intervened when the family refused, video showing the ‘aunt’ trying to attack onlookers as they tried to pull the child out of the water.
The child was pulled out of the water and taken to hospital, where doctors formally announced he had died.
In one clip, the boy’s ‘aunt’ is seen calling out that the child will come back to life.
They Were Arrested
The family members were all taken into custody for questioning, police said.
Haridwar city police chief Swantantra Kumar said: ‘It appears that they brought the boy here because they believed that Ganga snan [cleansing] would cure him.’
The River Ganges, with a central role in India’s founding history, has lasting religious and cultural significance to Hindus.
Believers bathe in the river and hold to be the embodiment of all sacred waters in religious mythology.
