A two-and-a-half-year-old boy, who fell into a borewell in a village in Madhya Pradesh’s Ujjain district, was pulled out on Friday after nearly 23 hours of rescue operation and taken to hospital where he was declared dead upon examination, officials said.
The toddler, Bhagirath, slipped into the borewell in Jhalariya village under Badnagar tehsil, about 75 km from the district headquarters, at around 7.30pm on Thursday, triggering a massive rescue operation involving multiple teams, including one from the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF).
Ujjain Collector Roshan Kumar Singh said the child was rescued and rushed to a civil hospital in an ambulance for medical examination immediately after being pulled out of the borewell.
However, the child was found dead during examination, District Chief Medical and Health Officer (CM&HO) Dr Suyash Shrivastava told PTI.
“After post-mortem we are going to hand over the body to the family,” he added.
Bhagirath was the son of Praveen Devasi, originally a resident of Gudanla village in Rajasthan’s Pali district, who works as a shepherd.
Collector Singh said rescue agencies were activated soon after receiving information about the incident and multiple measures were taken to rescue the child despite challenging conditions.
Rescue teams frantically worked through the night, facing difficulties due to rocky terrain and the presence of boulders during the digging operation, but managed to pull out the toddler, stated the IAS officer.
The boy was unresponsive when he was extricated after nearly 23 hours of rescue operation, according to the officials.
Earlier, officials said the child was being monitored through a camera inserted into the borewell and oxygen was being regularly supplied to him.
Badnagar police station in-charge, Ashok Patidar, had said rocky terrain and intermittent boulders delayed the rescue.
Another official said the child was trapped at a depth of 60 to 65 feet, and rescuers encountered rock formations after digging up to about 40 feet.
Specialised drilling machines were brought from Bhopal and Indore to break the rocks, officials said.
District Commandant of the State Disaster Response Force, Santosh Jat, said attempts were also made to pull the child up using a “rescue rope ring.”
Teams of the SDRF and NDRF were engaged in the operation, using around half a dozen Poclain and JCB machines.
The officials said the boy’s family was grazing sheep when a stone covering the borewell got displaced. The child, who was walking behind, removed the cover out of curiosity and fell into the borewell.
The family had arrived in the area three days ago, while the child’s father was in Pali district at the time of the incident, they added.
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