TWO-YEAR-OLD GIRL DROWNS IN DRAIN HIDDEN BY FLOODWATERS

ALOR SETAR, Sept 20 (Bernama) -- A grandfather was heartbroken when he discovered that his granddaughter drowned in a drain in Lorong Seri, off Jalan Langgar, near here last night.

Amidst the stormy season with floods currently swamping the northern states, Mohd Hamidan Hashim, 38, was scanning further on the horizon when the real danger for little children loomed closer to home as open drains are hidden from sight in the rising waters.

When his granddaughter, Nur Aisha Misya Afifah Abdul Fattah, 2, was found dead by villagers as the floodwater was subsiding, Mohad Hamidan said that he went down into the water-filled drain himself to retrieve her lifeless body.

"Before the incident, she went out to play with her three-year-old brother. On their return home, she slipped out again unnoticed.

"She must have fallen into the drain on the second outing ... the drain was indeed filled to the brim as the area was flooded and not visible, and there is no drain cover as well," he said at the Forensic Department of Sultanah Bahiyah Hospital here today.

He said as soon as he received a call from the little girl's mother Siti Nurfarhana Abdullah, 18, who raised the alarm that Nur Aisha was missing, he rushed home from work and began searching for the deceased all the way to Sungai Kedah.

"Before I even reached home, villagers couldn't find her in the surrounding area. I was searching for more than two hours before she appeared as the floodwaters started to recede … at first, I thought it was a doll, but after realising that it was my granddaughter, I went down into the drain and lifted her body to the side.

"I called out her name 'Ecah' but she was gone. The face was already blue and the whole body rigid, being stuck in the drain for so long. When I picked her up, my tears just flowed unendingly," he said.

Mohd Hamidan said the deceased, who was his second grandchild, was very close to him and called him 'Abah'. Ominously, she was withdrawn in behaviour, refusing to eat and falling quiet.

"She's a very cheerful girl but on Wednesday, she kept to herself and didn't want to play with her little brother. It's really tragic, what has happened and even the brother still doesn't understand that his sister is gone, I just said that his sister is sleeping.

"The remains of the deceased will be buried at the Masjid Al-Irfan Muslim cemetery in Derga after the post-mortem," he said.

Meanwhile, the police have yet to issue a statement regarding the incident.

-- BERNAMA