Two minor girls drowned, while their mother and elder sister were rescued from a lake in Partur tehsil of Maharashtra's Jalna district on Saturday, police said.
The victims, who belonged to a family of labourers, had gone to the lake in Surumgaon village to wash clothes, when Lakshmi Rajesh Thorat (11) and Shravani (9), who had ventured into the water, started drowning, an official said.
Seeing that the girls were drowning, their mother Renuka (37) and elder sister Mukta (15) jumped in to save them, following which their seven-year-old brother raised an alarm and called the locals for help, he said.
One of the villagers managed to rescue Renuka and Mukta with the help of a saree, while the two girls could not be saved, the official said, adding that the bodies of the deceased were fished out and sent for post-mortem.
