Neighbours of Indian toddler Gurshan Singh astonished over his death

MELBOURNE - The residents of David St in Melbourne, from where three-year-old Indian boy Gurshan Singh went missing and was later found dead on Thursday, are astonished over how the toddler vanished from a busy street in the middle of a clear day.

The street where Gurshan spent his last day is no sleepy suburban lane - from the front his house there is a clear view of a primary school, a church and a busy shopping strip - the heart of the Lalor community.

Residents are questioning why no one at the school, no one at the funeral at St Luke’s Catholic Church, and no one walking to the shops saw Gurshan.

Rosanna and Domencio Stancati are puzzled that a child might be snatched and no one would notice.

“It was pension day, people were at the church, the street was full of people. How did no one see something?” The Herald Sun quoted Stancati, as saying.

Another local, Marisa Talarico, who lives a few doors down from the house where Gurshan played and could at times be heard in the back yard, said: “I’d seen her and the little boy around, at the shops and the train station.”

“He was just a normal little boy. When we found out he had been found dead, we were all devastated. But what we don’t understand is there was a funeral on across the road. How could someone not have seen something?” she added.

Gurshan’s body was found near Melbourne Airport on Thursday night, about 30 kilometers from where the toddler disappeared from a house in Lalor six hours earlier.

He arrived in Australia in January with his parents, and was due to return to India this week after father Harjit Singh Channa failed to find work in Melbourne.

It is being claimed that the infant vanished while his mother was having a shower.

Victoria Police had earlier said that an autopsy has not determined the cause of death, and there was no evidence of violence on his body, which was found fully-clothed in blue jeans and a gray shirt.

Police hoped further testing, including toxicology tests, could provide answers.

Investigators are believed to be leaning away from the theory that Gurshan had fallen victim to a random attack.

One possibility is that he died of natural causes and someone panicked and disposed of his body. (ANI)