Photo for representational purpose.
A 9-nine year old Indian girl was found dead under mysterious circumstances in her home's bathroom and police is questioning her step-mother after describing the death as "suspicious".
Ashdeep Kaur had moved to Queens here from India just three months ago and lived in an apartment in with her father Mr Sukhjinder Singh and her stepmother Ms Arjun Samdhi Pardas.
Ashdeep Kaur was found dead in her house's bath tub on Friday, with police describing her death as "suspicious" after the body was found naked and with bruises.
A neighbour who shared part of Singh's house - including the bathroom - called him at work and told him that Ms Pardas and his daughter had gone into the bathroom together.
Ms Pardas came out of the bathroom alone and then left the house.
The neighbour said the child had been in the locked bathroom for three or four hours and she had called the police.
Police were on the look-out for Ms Pardas, who was tracked down at a separate address in Queens.
She is being questioned by the police.
The New York Post quoted sources as saying that Ms Pardas was supposed to have been watching Ashdeep and is a "person of interest" in the death.
The child was pronounced dead at the scene by emergency responders.
"When I heard what happened, I couldn't believe it," said neighbor Nancy Fong in the New York Post report.
"Who gonna kill a baby? Who has the heart to kill a baby?"
Mr Singh rushed home from work when authorities contacted him, and could be heard screaming in the back of an ambulance.
"He just moved here a couple of weeks ago," said Mr Harmeet Singh, who works with the bereaved father at a chicken restaurant.
A cousin of Mr Kaur's father, said of the girl in a report in New York Daily News, "There was no water, but she was in the tub."
The child had allegedly complained of the stepmom, sometimes, beating her.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)