Aping TV serial's fire dance scene,7-yr-old girl dies of burns

Apparantly mimicking a "fire-dance" scene she saw in a Kannada TV serial, a seven- year old girl caught fire at her home and died of burns at Harihar in north Karnataka, police said quoting her mother.
Prarthana, a class two student, collected waste paper in a room, poured kerosene on them and set them ablaze. She began dancing around the blaze but her clothes caught fire and soon she was engulfed in flames, they said, adding her parents were not at home when the incident happened on November 11.
She tried to enact a scene in the Kannada serial she had just then watched, "Nandini", in which a character performs a dance surrounded by fire but remains unscathed, according to the girl's mother.

Prarthana called her younger sister also to join in, but the petrified sibling refused and rushed to their neighbour seeking help after she saw her sister in trouble, the police said.
The girl, who studies in St Mary's Convent school, was rushed to a government hospital with 60 per cent burns by her neighbours and later shifted to Davangere but she died the next day, they said.
Her mother is a home-maker and father is a daily wage earner.

Police said the incident came to light only yesterday after her mother decided to inform them "so that no other child fell victim to TV addiction".

"Prarthana used to regularly watch two serials, including a horror-thriller. In one of the serials, the lead character is seen dancing on fire," her mother was quoted as saying.
Police said they have registered a case of unnatural death.