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Five girls were playing around a bonfire in Gujarat's Surat on Friday evening. Hours later, three were dead leaving two survivors to tell the nightmarish tale that led up to their deaths.
The group had gathered around the bonfire, made from burning garbage in an open field in Pali village in the Sachin area. The girls started vomiting after inhaling fumes from the fire and fainted soon after. All of them were rushed to a private hospital where three of them - Durga Mahanto (12), Amita Mahanto (14), and Anita Mahanto (8) - died.
"While they were warming themselves, the girls started vomiting and fell unconscious. They were rushed to a hospital where three of them died," said Sachin GIDC-1 police inspector JR Chaudhari.
The police officer said that the exact cause of death will be known after a postmortem report is prepared and forensic examination conducted. "Prima facie, inhaling a poisonous gas seems to be the cause," he said.
The aunt of Durga Mahanto claimed that they first took her to Civil Hospital in Navsari but the staff allegedly asked them to leave around 1 am. They then took her to another hospital where she died around 6.30 am on Saturday.
Durga Mahanto's father, Ram Pravesh Mahanto, said that after taking some medicines one of the children got better but Durga's condition kept getting worse. "I don't even know how did this happen. "When I came back home from work I saw the girls and then took them to hospital," he said.
He claimed that at the Navsari hospital, the staff told them that the girls needed to be tested but the blood reports would only come on Monday, as the lab is closed on Saturdays and Sundays.
Surat Civil Hospital Chief Medical Officer Dr Ketan Naik said the girls might have fallen ill after inhaling the toxic fumes.
He said that some of the girls also had eaten ice cream at night, so there was also a possibility of food poisoning.
"Things will become clear after postmortem and forensic investigation," he added.
(With inputs from Mahendra Prasad)