Dubai:
Mystery surrounds the death of a 12-year-old Indian girl in the emirate of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) after she fell from a building, a media report said on Tuesday.
The body of the girl, an eighth grade student of Sharjah Indian School who lived with her parents in the neighbouring emirate of Ajman, was found in a residential building behind a hotel in the Al Qasimiya area of Sharjah, the Khaleej Times reported.
According to the report, the girl's parents informed her school that she had not reached home by 4 p.m.
The principal told the newspaper that the girl's parents were informed that she was dropped at her apartment building around 3 p.m. and CCTV footage of the bus confirmed this.
A team from the school also went to Ajman to search for the girl.
Sharjah police said that patrols, CID officers, an ambulance and forensic experts rushed to the scene and found the girl lying in a pool of blood and motionless.
The body was sent for post mortem and the parents taken into custody for interrogation, police said on Monday.
The report cited sources as saying that the girl took a cab and went from Ajman to Sharjah but did not have the money to pay for the fare.
"She went to a friend's mother and asked for money. When she questioned the girl, she ran away," a source was quoited as saying.
"Apparently, she gave her earrings to the taxi driver, which he refused to accept. Then, she gave her mother's number to him and asked him to call her for money only after 4 p.m. It is through the driver that her family got to know about all these," the source added.
A resident of the building where the body was found said that the girl had fallen through the ventilation shaft near a kitchen on the first floor.