Five children met a watery grave while frolicking in a pond in Bihar’s Kaimur district on Monday.

All of them hailed from one family and their bodies have been recovered. The incident occurred at Dhavpokhar village under Karamchat police station on Monday afternoon.

The deceased have been identified as three sisters — Anupriya Kumari, 12, Anshu Priya, 10, and Madhu Priya, 7. Their cousins Aman Kumar, 4, and Apurva Soni, 6, also died in the incident. Another kid from the family — Ankit Kumar, 5, — survived because he did not enter the pond.

According to the villagers, the children had followed Aman’s mother Vibha Devi, who visited her farm around a kilometre outside the village. The kids stopped near a pond and started playing, while she went to see the crops.

“I was returning from a farm when I saw Ankit sitting on the pond’s edge and crying. I asked him what happened and he said that his didis (elder sisters) had gone inside the pond and not come out,” a villager Dipak Kumar said.

Dipak ran to the village shouting, following which several people rushed to the pond. Many of them entered the water and took out the bodies. All of them were taken to a private hospital in the area, where the doctors declared them ‘brought dead’.

Karamchat station house officer Sunit Kumar Singh reached the village after the incident. “All five bodies have been sent to the district hospital for post-mortem. We have also informed the local administrative officials about the mishap so that they could send a report to the disaster management department and seek help for the affected families.” Singh said.