The mother of a 12-year-old girl who drowned has claimed institutional racism within the police means the family may never know how she died.

Shukri Abdi drowned in the River Irwell in Bury, in Greater Manchester, on 27 June. The family claim officers failed to carry out a full investigation and treated them differently because of their ethnic background.

The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) is investigating.

Greater Manchester Police (GMP) previously said the death was a “tragic incident” and it did not believe there were any suspicious circumstances.

It has now told the BBC it is “still investigating on behalf of the coroner”.

Police ‘not sympathetic’

Shukri’s mother, Zam Zam Ture, told the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire programme that when she reported her daughter missing on the day of her death, police initially failed to act.

Approximately 10 hours later, she said, she was informed that her daughter had been found dead, but described police as “not sympathetic”.

She said they spoke to her “harshly” and were “trying to convince [her] that her daughter had been swimming”, which the family say was unlikely as Shukri could not swim, had been wearing full Islamic dress and it would have been “out of character” for her to attempt to do so.