Four children of a family, including three girls, drowned in a pond while grazing their goats in a field in Jaipur on Thursday, police said. A police head constable jumped into the pond to save the children, but his efforts ended up in vain as they had all drowned before help could arrive.

Circle Officer Deepak Khandelwal said that the children, identified as Kamleshi, Hema, Rameshwari and Vinod, had gone to graze a flock of goats in the nearby field, which had a big pond in the middle of it.

This was when one of the children slipped and fell into the pond. The rest of them jumped into the pond to save the child. The police reached the spot as soon as they were informed that four children had fallen into the pond.

Head Constable Gumanaram jumped into the pond to save their lives, but they were already dead. Later, the bodies were recovered and taken out of the pond with the help of the villagers.

The bodies have been kept in the mortuary of a nearby hospital, and will be handed over to their family after the post-mortem.

According to police, the pond was overflowing and there was no fencing around it to prevent any untoward incident. Further investigation into the matter is underway, police added.

With inputs from Vishal