Beleghata: A 10-year-old girl left alone on the ground floor of her family's two-storey home was gagged and bound by a robber before he cleaned out an almirah containing gold and silver jewellery.

Sushma Das, a Class IV student at Hariyana Vidya Mandir, was playing with a mobile phone while her mother and aunt were in the kitchen upstairs when the intruder entered the room she was in.

The girl said later that she froze when the man in jeans and orange T-shirt appeared before her and asked her not to utter a word. The robber gagged her with a piece of cloth and tied her hands with another one.

Witness immobilised, he had it easy after that. He did not even have to hunt for the key to the safe - it was hanging from the keyhole.

Sushma's mother and aunt came to know about the robbery only when the little girl walked up to the first floor with her hands still tied and a cloth stuffed into her mouth.

"We had been cooking lunch. She was alone in the room on the ground floor and playing a game on her mother's mobile phone," her aunt Kanchana recounted. "She broke down as soon as we removed the cloth and freed her hands. She was shivering."

Sushma needed five minutes to calm down and coherently narrate the incident to her mother and aunt. She said the robber had grabbed her throat while threatening her.

Sushma's father Mahesh was at work - he works in a cardboard factory - when the incident happened. Another aunt of hers had just left for the nearby market after bolting the metal door from outside. The robber possibly entered through that door.