Dead Indian toddler 'hit by door' claim

TODDLER KILLED: Gurshan Singh Channa sparked a police hunt when he disappeared from a Melbourne house.

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The man charged over the death of toddler Gurshan Singh Channa in Australia was opening a door that accidentally hit the boy and then panicked when the child fell unconscious, his father in India says.

Pragat Singh Dhillon, father of the accused, Gursewak Dhillon, has told the Indian media that the toddler's death resulted from an ''innocent mistake''.

Gursewak Dhillon has been charged with manslaughter and criminal negligence over the death of the three-year-old who was found dead in a field near Melbourne Airport last week.

Pragat Singh Dhillon, a retired army captain living near the Punjab city of Jalandhar, said his son had given him an account by telephone of what happened.

''Three days back, Gursewak told me on the phone that as he opened the main door to his residence in Melbourne, which he shared with 12 others, including parents of Gurshan, he hit the boy. He said he could not see from outside that Gurshan was standing next to the door, and the child got hit and fell unconscious,'' he told the Indian Express newspaper.

Mr Dhillon said Gursewak told him he shook Gurshan to try to wake him up, but the child didn't respond. ''He then called out to Gurshan's mother, who was taking a bath, and his own wife, Simrat Kaur, who was in the kitchen at the time, but both couldn't hear his calls. He then put the child in his car to take him to hospital,'' he told the Indian Express.

''Gursewak said, on the way, his car fuel finished and he got it filled, and then it seemed to him that the child may be dead. It frightened him, and afraid of being charged with murder, he dumped the child.''

Mr Dhillon claimed his son was afraid that nobody would believe his story. If Gursewak had had the courage to admit his mistake, instead of hiding it, he would ''not be in such deep trouble'', the Indian Express reported Mr Dhillon as saying.

''He couldn't hurt anyone ... how could he kill a child?''

IP Singh, a local Times of India reporter who spoke to Pragat Singh Dhillon on Tuesday, told The Age that Mr Dhillon insisted his son had ''made an innocent mistake, not committed a crime''. Mr Dhillon told the journalist he had spoken to his son about the incident before his arrest.

Mr Dhillon would not speak to the media yesterday and was unavailable to speak to The Age.

Melbourne police say Dhillon drove the boy around in the boot of his car for several hours before dumping the body in grassland near Melbourne Airport.

Gursewak Dhillon's mother, Sukhwinder Kaur, said she could not imagine that this ''could happen to our son''.

Mr and Mrs Dhillon say they haven't slept since they got the news that the 23-year-old had been arrested.

Indian media reports say others in the Dhillons' neighbourhood in Jalandhar are also shocked by Gursewak's arrest. ''Gursewak is quite a simple and loving boy,'' family friend Jaswinder Singh was quoted as saying.

- © Fairfax NZ News