Mumbai: Four days after an 18-month-old toddler was allegedly pushed to her death down the stairwell from the sixth floor of a Goregaon building, Dindoshi police on Sunday registered an FIR for murder against her 10-year-old neighbour.The case was lodged on the basis of a complaint given by the toddler’s mother.Soon after the death, police had produced the 10-year-old before Juvenile Justice Board (JJB), which said the girl would have to undergo counselling and appointed an NGO for the purpose. The girl was released in the care of her parents. Sources said the family left the housing society and moved in with relatives.The 10-year-old and her family had moved into the housing society only a fortnight before the death.On Oct 14, the toddler was playing in the common corridor with a cat outside her sixth floor house between 9pm and 9.30pm. After some time, her mother couldn’t see her in the corridor and sent her 12-year-old brother to look for her. He did not find her either and peered down the stairwell. He spotted someone lying in the basement with clothes that matched his sister’s and immediately alerted their mother. By then, residents had found the injured toddler and rushed her to a civic hospital where she was pronounced dead.“The security railing on the sixth floor is about three-and-a-half feet tall and my daughter couldn’t have lost her balance and fallen off it. After police checked the CCTV footage, it was found that the 10-year-old girl had gestured at my daughter and summoned her towards the lift,” the mother said in her statement to police. She said after her daughter went to her, the 10-year-old lifted her and threw her down the stairwell near the lift. “She then ran away… It appears she understood the gravity of her actions.”Police initially recorded an accidental death case. Under the law, children under seven are completely excluded from being prosecuted under criminal law, and those between the ages of 7 and 12 are excluded only if the court thinks that they did not understand the consequence of their actions.Experts said it’s important that the girl undergoes counselling and rehabilitation and the path ahead should be healing and not punitive.
