Three-year old boy who fell into borewell pulled out dead in Telangana

(Eds: Adds details, background) Hyderabad, May 28 (PTI): Tragedy struck the family of Sanjay Sai Vardhan on Thursday when the three year-old boy was pulled out dead from a newly drilled borewell, with a near 10-hour multi-agency rescue operation turning futile in Medak district of Telangana, in yet another such grim incident. The child had accidentally fallen into the borewell on Wednesday and his body, stuck at a depth of 25 feet, was retrieved at around 4 am on Thursday, police said.

"He died before we evacuated him, most likely due to the mud that covered him from the top sealing off necessary oxygen supply," Medak Superintendent of Police Chandana Deepti told PTI. A pall of gloom descended on the locality following the boy's death, which brought back memories of similar unfortunate events involving children in Telangana and elsewhere in the country, including that of a three-year old boy in Tamil Nadu last year which grabbed national headlines.

Incidentally, in 2006, five-year-old Prince, who had fallen into a borewell in a village in Kurukshetra in Haryana, was rescued after nearly 48 hours following a massive operation. However, Sanjay Sai Vardhan was not as lucky as Prince.

Around 5 pm on Wednesday, the boy had accidentally slipped into the 120 feet borewell in his grandfather's agriculture field located in Podchanpally village of Papannapet mandal of the district when he was walking with his family members, including his father. His parents made a vain bid to rescue him using a saree.

After receiving information about the incident, police personnel and revenue officials, who were later joined by the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) personnel, rushed to the spot within around two hours and began the rescue efforts. Medak District Collector K Dharma Reddy, the SP and other senior officials supervised the rescue operation by more than 30 NDRF and more than 100 police personnel as two ambulances were stationed at the site.

As part of the operation, a parallel trench was dug along the borewell hole with the help of earth excavating machines and oxygen was supplied into it and a camera was also used to locate the boy, but the efforts went in vain. The boy's body was found stuck at a depth of around 25 feet, police said.

Sanjay Sai Vardhan was the third child of his parents, who hail from neighbouring Sangareddy district, and they had come to their grandparents' house in Podchanpally village. The borewell into which the boy fell was one of the three dug by the family since Tuesday night to try and find water for their fields but with no success, police said.

After postmortem, the boy's body was handed over to the family and a case of negligence registered in connection with the incident, a police official said. This is the latest incident bringing to fore the dangers posed by uncovered borewells, which have mostly been death traps for children in several places, including in Telangana.

In October 2014, a four-year old girl died after falling into a 300 feet deep borewell at Manchal village in neighbouring Ranga Reddy district. Similar was the fate of a 14-month old girl who accidentally slipped into a 450 feet open borewell in Chevella, around 60 km from here, in June 2017 with a near 60 -hour rescue effort ending in a failure.

In November last, the body of a five-year old girl was pulled out by rescuers nearly 18 hours after she fell into a 50-feet-deep borewell at Harsinghpura village in Haryana's Karnal district. In March 2019, an 18-month old boy was rescued from a borewell in Haryana's Hisar district, two days after he had fallen into it.

Similarly, in October last, the decomposed and mangled body of three-year old Sujith Wilson was pulled out from deep inside an unused borewell in Tamil Nadu's Tiruchirappalli district, even as an 80-hour rescue attempt to save the child proved futile..