AN INQUEST into the death of a 15-year-old girl who drowned at the Cotswold Water Park has heard of the moment her body was found by fellow swimmers.

Kajil Devi, who could not swim, had been playing a game with her cousins using an inflatable boat. The group had been briefly left along after an older relative went to get some food.

One of her cousins, a 13-year-old boy who cannot be named by order of the coroner, told the inquest that after her older cousin Akshay Kumar, 18, had left they played a game where one was pushed out on the boat and then pulled back with a rope by the others.

But Kajil, of South Road, Feltham, Middlesex, and a female cousin could not catch the rope when he was in the boat and he started drifting further out, he said.

The girls tried to reach the rope and that was when Kajil seemed to slip and go under the water.

He said this happened three times, but the third time when the younger cousin grabbed the rope, Kajil went under and all he could see was her hair.

The younger female cousin, who is now 11, told the inquest Kajil had been behind her and had previously said she needed to go to the toilet, so when she could not see her, she at first assumed she had done so.

She said Kajil had been taller than her, so she must have slipped or caught her foot to make her go under.

The teenager’s body was pulled from the water shortly afterwards by 26-year-old Nathan Stroud, of Gloucester, who was spending the afternoon at the lake.

Mr Stroud told the inquest his friend, Pierre, had ‘stumbled’ on something under water and ‘looked scared’.

"I searched for a minute or two and remember touching something with my leg," he told Gloucestershire's assistant deputy coroner Tom Osborne.

"It felt like a cushion. I reached down to grab it and pulled up a purple t-shirt and saw it was a little girl."

He said that there was no sign of life and had instantly tried to get her to the shore where he yelled for help.

Kajil was given CPR by a lifeguard and taken to hospital where she was certified dead the following day The 15-year-old had gone to the popular beauty spot with her parents, brother, aunts, uncles and cousins.

Her father, Sunil Kumar, told the inquest that at one point he thought someone may have kidnapped her.

Speaking through an interpreter he said all the family were ‘totally confused’ upon receiving reports of his daughter going missing.

Claims were made at the time in July 2010 about a lack of supervision at the beauty spot.

Kajil’s brother, Amin Kumar, said he only saw one lifeguard on duty when the girl disappeared at the popular lakeside beauty spot.

The inquest continues.