Mumbai, Oct 20 (Mid-day): The 11-year-old and his brother were playing at home, when the fabric got entangled around his neck

An 11-year-old boy accidentally hanged himself while he was playing with his five-year-old brother at their house at Kanjurmarg. The deceased, identified as Soham Manik More, was a Std VI student of St Xavier’s High School.

The incident occurred when he and his younger brother, Dhruv, were playing with their mother’s dupatta, swinging from it as it hung from the ceiling. Their mother, Mansi, would leave them at a crèche when she and their father went to work.

But Soham had begun to insist that she stop sending him there. She was considering leaving her job and staying at home instead. Mansi had gone to a parlour at 4.30 pm on Sunday after locking the door from the outside.

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When she came back an hour later she was shocked to see Soham lying on the floor. A family member said, “When Soham fell after getting strangulated, Dhruv thought he was playing with him. He also lay down next to him.”

Police said the 5-year-old was clueless about what had happened to his elder brother and kept wondering why he wasn’t playing anymore.

Cop speak

An officer from Kanjurmarg police station said, “Mansi came home around 5.30 pm and saw her dupatta around Soham’s neck and froth spewing from his mouth. She took him to a hospital where he was declared dead after admission.”

The hospital officials informed the local Kanjurmarg police station, which then registered an Accidental Death Report in the case. The police investigation revealed that the two brothers had hung their mother’s dupatta from the ceiling and were playing with it together.

“However, they started swinging from it, one after the other, and the dupatta accidentally got entangled around Soham’s neck and strangulated him to death,” said an official. After learning of the incident, their father Manik flew back to the city from Chennai, where he gone for work.