Kerala: 2.5-year-old baby swept off beach by waves while mother clicks selfies

A toddler was swept into the sea while his mother was clicking selfies with him and a few other children at Alappuzha beach in Kerala around 2:30 pm on Sunday.

Key Highlights

• The child's mother was clicking selfies with him and two other kids

• Police said he was in the arms of his mother when rough waves struck

• The district child welfare committee had demanded that a case be registered against people who took the kids to the beach

Alappuzha: In a tragic incident, a toddler was swept off Alappuzha beach in Kerala while his mother was clicking selfies with three children including him around 2:30 pm on Sunday. This missing boy, identified as Adhikrishna, was just two-and-a-half years old.

Adhikrishna’s parents, Lakshmanan and Anithamoli, are natives of Palakkad district. Their relative, Binu, resides in Alappuzha. Two days back, Anithamoli arrived at Binu’s house with her two kids and the son of her brother after participating in a wedding function, police said.

How it happened 

Binu drove Anithamoli and the three kids to Alappuzha beach on Sunday. Police stopped them from entering the beach's main portion as the conditions were rough, so they went to the portion near ESI hospital. Anithamoli began clicking selfies with the kids while Binu went for parking the car. Suddenly, they got caught in rough waves.

Police said Adhikrishna was in the arms of Anithamoli when the waves struck. While he was swept into the sea, Binu managed to pull out the other two kids and Anithamoli, according to a report by The Times of India.

Meanwhile, the district child welfare committee had demanded that a case be registered against people who took the kids to the beach.

Similar incident

In a similar incident, a woman from Andhra Pradesh died in the US after slipping into waterfalls at Atlanta while taking selfies on Saturday. The deceased, identified as P Kamala, had gone to the US for higher education four years ago.

She was working in a private company at Columbia in South Carolina after completing MS. She went to her relative’s house in Atlanta on Saturday. While returning, she halted at the waterfalls and started taking selfies. She accidentally slipped, fell down and died.