Three children were found dead in a wooden box in their home in Uttarakhand’s Pithoragarh district on Saturday night, police said.

Police believe the children — two girls aged 10 and seven and a boy aged four, all siblings — might have been playing and “got trapped in the box” and were asphyxiated to death.

Deputy superintendent of police, Pithoragarh, Shekhar Suyal said further investigation and post-mortem would clarify how died.

The children were Nisha (10), Sapna (7) and Karthik (4).

The incident happened in Kumti village under of Bulwakot in Dharchula area of Pithoragarh, nearly 457 km from Dehradun.

Suyal said the children’s grandparents were at their farm while their parents had gone to collect ‘Keerajari’ from the higher reaches of the Himalayas.

‘Keerajari’, a fungus found in Himalayan mountains and popularly known as ‘Himalayan Viagra’, is hunted by locals in the meadows in May and June when snow starts melting.

Suyal said when grandparents of the children returned home, they couldn’t find them and started a search. “After a lot of searches, they finally found them in the wooden box.”

The district authorities are trying to locate their parents to inform them about the incident and ensure their return at the earliest.