An 18-month-old toddler drowned in a water jar in Kandal province on Sunday afternoon while his parents were busy farming, Anlong Romiet commune police chief Keath Vanna said yesterday.

The victim was identified as Houn Channareak.

According to Vanna, the toddler’s mother, Nhann Khunnary, 35, said that the boy was playing at his grandmother’s house about 20 metres away while she was doing the laundry. She and her husband were weeding their farm and planting vegetables until 5pm.

“We did not find our little boy when we stopped planting the vegetables in the farm, because we thought that he was with his grandmother,” Vanna quoted Khunnary as saying.

“I was very stunned when I took the water from the big jar to clean the milled rice for cooking and saw him dead at the bottom of [it].”

Vanna added that nothing was found to suggest foul play.

Police, who found a small chair near the jar, assumed that the toddler climbed onto the chair to take some water but fell into the jar and drowned.

“However, we consider the death of the boy as being caused by his parents who did not look after him carefully,” he said.