JULY 2019 | GLIMPSE | 55SERIOUS STORYInfact modern geophysical instruments
are also required for the plan to succeed.
Sometimes it becomes difficult to even
access the size of the rock which blocks
access to the point where the child is
blocked. Also drilling through the rocks
can be precarious here because a lot of
drilling can cause the entire borewell to
collapse.
Recent cases of children who fell to
their deaths
In a very recent case, a two-year-old
Fatehveer Singh was pulled out of a
150-foot-deep and a seven-inch wide,
unused borewell in Bhagwanpura
village in Punjab’s Sangrur district,
after about 110 hours. The child was
stuck at a depth of 125 feet. The lifeless,
decomposing body of the child was
finally pulled out after more than four
days. Even though oxygen was being
supplied to the child, the doctors said
that the child had passed away two days
after falling into the deadly bore. After
the incident, the Punjab & Haryana High
court has demanded a report from the
state government about the reasons
which lead to the delay in Fatehveers
rescue operation and what are the
steps taken to ensure that other open
borewells in the region are sealed. The
state chief minister also directed deputy
commissioners of all the districts to get
all the open borewells closed a step
which was not implemented till the time
this story went to print.
Fatehveer was taken to the Post
Graduate Institute of Medical &
Research (PGIMER) Chandigarh where
he was declared brought dead by the
doctors. The district administration
was blamed for the delay in rescuing
the child because of the unavailability
of any modern machine/ technology or
expertise in culling the child out in time.
Fatehveers case is not the only one,
in May; a four-year-old girl was pulled
out dead from a 440 feet borewell at a
farm in Melana village in Jodhpur. Thegirl had slipped into the borewell while
playing near the open borewell and was
stuck at a depth of 260 feet. The body
was pulled out after a 14-hour operation
and handed over to her family members.
In March, Roshan a four-year-old-boy
fell into a 33-feet-deep open borewell
in a village in Umaria village in Madhya
Pradesh’s Dewas district. But the child
was rescued.
In April, an eight-year-old girl fell into
a 60-foot deep borewell in Farrukhabad.
The rescue operations were called off
after experts suggested that six houses
in the vicinity of the borewell had
developed cracks because of the digging
and they could eventually cave in if the
digging is not stopped.
In September last year, a two-year
old child who fell into a ditch was saved
from Nagapattinam in Chennai. The
child had fallen into a 15-feet-deep
borewell while playing outside her
house. The fire and rescue department
were immediately informed when the
family found her stuck inside the deep
pit.
Not all children are as lucky as Prince,
a six-year old boy who had fallen into a
15 feet (4mm) borewell in Kurukshetra in
Haryana a few years back. The child was
rescued after a two-day long operation.
These are not the only cases. There
is a long list of names of children who
have fallen to their death in the open
borewells which abound in India.