5-yr-old Dies After Falling in Borewell in Maharashtra, NDRF Rescue Op Called Off | List of Similar Accidents

A five-year-old boy, who fell into an uncovered borewell on a farm in Maharashtra’s Ahmednagar, died on Tuesday morning while the NDRF operation to rescue him was underway.

The National Disaster Response Force had on Monday evening launched an operation to rescue the boy, identified as Sagar Budha Barela, who was stuck at the depth of 15-feet after falling into the borewell around 4 pm. The operation, however, has been called off now as the boy passed away, an official said.

The local police said that Barela’s family had temporarily migrated to Ahmednagar from Madhya Pradesh’s Burhanpur district. The family was employed by a sugarcane-cutting contractor.

“The borewell is around 200-feet deep and the boy is stuck in the middle. Considering the requirement of specialised tools and skilled rescuers, the NDRF was called,” the official said.

In January, a four-year-old boy was rescued after he fell in a borewell in Uttar Pradesh’s Hapur. The boy was reportedly playing near the borewell when he fell inside.

The NDRF had led this rescue operation too, which went for nearly four hours. The team reached the spot as soon as they received information, and started the operation to save the boy. “Oxygen and food were sent inside the borewell”, district magistrate Medha Rupam was quoted as saying by news agency PTI.

In December, an eight-year-old boy died after falling into a 55-feet-deep borewell in Mandavi village in Betul district of Madhya Pradesh. A rescue operation to save him too was launched, and oxygen was provided to him.

Police station in-charge Anil Soni said that the boy, Tanmay Diyawar, was playing on the field when he fell into the borewell, which had been dug recently. The earthmoving machines were brought in to dig the area and arrangements were made to provide oxygen to the boy, he had said.

In June, 11-year-old Rahul Sahu had fallen into an 80-foot-deep borewell in Chhattisgarh’s Pihrid village, but was rescued after more than 110 hours. Around 500 personnel, including officials from the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), the Army and the local police were involved in the massive rescue operation.

The First Borewell Accident That Hit National Headlines

The first borewell accident that was all over the news was in 2006 when a six-year-old boy named ‘Prince’ fell into a 60-feet borewell in Haryana’s Kurukshetra district. While all media houses had stationed their reporters at the site, the entire country was hooked to their television sets as they prayed for the boy.

According to a report in ABP News, after several hours of rigorous attempts failed to take Prince out, the rescue team devised another way to save the boy.

They found another empty borewell of the same depth nearby. Iron pipes with a diameter of three feet were used to connect the two wells, and Prince was finally rescued after 50 hours of struggle.

It was a momentous triumph for the NDRF as Prince became the first child to have been rescued alive from a borewell. According to the National Disaster Response Force data, nearly seven children had found themselves in a similar situation before Prince. But none survived. A special episode on the accident was aired on National Geographic Channel last year.

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