The search for six-year-old Suhan stretched through the night in Chittoor, torches cutting through darkness, police vehicles circling narrow lanes, and anxious neighbours calling out a child’s name that never came back in reply. By Sunday morning, the search ended where few had thought to look.

Suhan’s body was spotted floating in a pond nearly 800 metres from his home — a water body that had remained untouched during the frantic 21-hour search, even as several ponds closer to his house were checked repeatedly. The discovery stunned the neighbourhood.

Locals say the pond’s location makes the circumstances deeply suspicious. Though it lies near a road, access is far from easy. A canal runs alongside the stretch, followed by a raised bank and a narrow footpath. To reach the water, one must consciously climb down. “A child cannot just wander in and fall here,” residents insist.

The doubts grew sharper when details of the search emerged. Sniffer dogs brought in on Saturday tracked a scent trail only up to a point roughly 100 metres beyond the pond. Search teams called off operations around midnight, confident that all nearby water bodies had been examined. This pond was not among them.

Adding to the mystery, locals revealed that people had bathed in the same pond on Saturday evening, hours after Suhan went missing. None reported seeing a body.

Suhan had last been seen around noon on Saturday. Family members say he walked out after a minor quarrel with his brother while playing at home. With such arguments common, concern set in only when he failed to return. By then, crucial time had slipped away.

The boy, a class I student, reportedly had epilepsy — a factor police are now examining as part of the investigation. His mother, a school teacher, was at work when he disappeared. His father, employed abroad, is on his way back to Kerala.

Municipality chairman Sumesh Achuthan has publicly raised an alarm, stating that the death does not appear accidental and that the terrain makes an unintended fall unlikely.

As the civil defence and fire force teams recovered the body, the grief-stricken neighbourhood was left grappling with a question that refuses to fade: How did a six-year-old reach a pond he was never expected to find — and why was that pond overlooked when every other one was searched?

Police say further investigation and an inquest will determine the cause of death. For now, the pond stands silent, holding secrets a community is desperate to understand.