A teenaged girl's prank to scare her sisters by pretending to hang herself cost her life as the stone on which she was standing slipped, tightening the noose around her neck at her house in India's southern state of Tamil Nadu.
Thirteen-year-old Maheswari made a noose of her dupatta, put it around her neck and managed to tie the other end to a wooden plank in the ceiling of the house by standing on a stone last evening, police said.
The stone on which she was standing slipped and the girl lost her balance as the noose tightened.
Her sisters raised the alarm asking for help, but before anyone could arrive at the scene the girl had breathed her last.