Navneet, the 12-year-old schoolboy from Kerala who died on Friday after being accidentally hit by a makeshift cricket bat, was cremated in Nooranad town on Sunday. The bat accidentally hit the sixth standard student on the head as he was walking towards a tap to wash his hands after having lunch.
He was a student at Chunnakkara government higher secondary school at Mavelikkara, Alappuzha.
On Friday, during lunch hour at the school, three children were playing cricket in a small space between two buildings within the school compound. Navneeth, after having his lunch, was walking close to those playing cricket, and heading towards a tap to wash his hands. The batsman, an eighth standard student, was using a wooden armrest as a cricket bat and swung it, but the wooden plank accidentally slipped out of his hand and hit the victim, said a police officer to The Hindu.
Navneeth was rushed to the taluk Hospital at Kayamkulam where he was declared dead on arrival. The doctors at Alappuzha Medical college, who conducted the post-mortem on Saturday, concluded that the death occurred due to a major blood vessel injury to the brain.
Manorama online reported the doctors as having told the family and police that the bruise on the head may have caused the blood vessel to break, leading to bleeding into the brain which resulted in the death. There were no external injuries.
Police had registered a case of culpable homicide not amounting to murder under Section 304A of the IPC on Friday.
Over 70 students from the school came for the funeral of Navneeth on Sunday, to pay their last respects.
The eighth-grade student from whose hand the bat slipped, is reportedly in shock and has gone quiet. The legislator for Mavelikkara, R Rajesh, and the police have urged the school authorities to offer psychiatric counselling to the child.