A six-year-old twin girl died after a tamarind seed got stuck in her throat

A tragic incident has been reported from Galaha, Nillamba area, where a six-year-old girl unfortunately died after a tamarind seed got stuck in her throat. The deceased girl has been identified as Chanudi Lakshani, one of two twin sisters from the same family.

On the day of the incident, the girls' mother had gone to work, and their father was also employed in an outstation area. When they were about to have lunch, the three girls, frightened by a monitor lizard on the roof, went to their aunt's nearby house. There, the deceased girl asked for tamarind from her 14-year-old elder sister, Kanchana Lakshani, who was eating a tamarind pod, and consumed it.

The girl, holding the tamarind seed, soon began to struggle for breath. Following the elder sister's screams, the mother arrived at the scene, patted the girl's back, and took steps to rush her to the hospital. However, investigations revealed that the girl was already deceased when she was admitted to the Peradeniya Sirimavo Bandaranaike Specialized Children's Hospital around 3:00 PM on the 2nd of last month.

During the inquest held before Mr. Amal Jayawardena, the Inquirer into Sudden Deaths at Peradeniya Teaching Hospital, evidence was led by Police Sergeant Jayathilaka of Galaha Police. The post-mortem examination conducted by Specialist Judicial Medical Officer Dr. R.P. Jayasuriya of Peradeniya Teaching Hospital determined that the girl's death was due to an obstruction caused by a foreign object lodged in the lower part of her respiratory tract. Furthermore, Dr. Palitha Bandara Subasinghe, the Judicial Medical Officer at Peradeniya Teaching Hospital, added that if there had been even minimal knowledge of basic first aid, the girl's life could have been saved.