Samikhsya Bureau
A six-year-old girl from India died near US-Mexico border after her mother went in search of water, a medical examiner and US Border Patrol said.
CNN quoted the US Custom and Border Protection saying that girl was trying to cross into the United States from Mexico side with a group of people from India.
The girl, Gurupreet Kaur, was found 17 miles west of Lukeville, just over the US-Mexico border, Arizona on Wednesday when temperatures reached a high of 108 degrees Fahrenheit (42 Celsius), sources said.
Pima county chief medical examiner Gregory Hess, said Gurupreet, was about to turn seven, adding that her death was accidental and caused by hyperthermia.
The girl and her mother were among a group of five Indian nationals dropped off by smugglers in a remote border area on Tuesday.
After walking some way, the girl’s mother and another woman went in search of water, leaving her daughter with another woman and her child. “Once they went to look for water they never saw them again,” said US Border Patrol agent Jesus Vasavilbaso.
The mother and the other woman wandered in the desert and were found at 8 am on Wednesday morning, 22 hours after their drop off, by a Border Patrol agent who tracked their footprints.
According to CNN, Border Patrol agents got the information on her movements from two women from India who told officials they’d been separated from a woman and two children traveling in their group hours earlier.
The Border Patrol took the two women into the custody and launched a search operation of the area near the US-Mexico border using helicopters. They discovered the little girl’s body within hours. The agents also found footprints of the people she had been travelling with, which indicated they returned to Mexico.
“Our sympathies are with this little girl and her family. This is a senseless death driven by cartels who are profiting from putting lives at risk,” CNN quoted Tucson chief patrol agent Roy Villareal as saying.
According to US authorities, the number of Indians smuggled across US borders has increased drastically over a decade. Over 9,000 people from India were detained at the borders by border patrols in 2018 when they were trying to cross over to US. It was a big rise from 2017 when over 3,000 people were detained.
The number of Indians detained at US borders while crossing over was just 204 in 2009.
(With agency reports)
