A two-year-old child, who had fallen and trapped in a 150-foot-deep unused borewell in Punjab’s Sangrur district, has been declared dead. He was pulled out of the borewell on Tuesday morning after a rescue operation of over 110 hours.
The child, Fatehvir Singh was rushed to PGIMER Chandigarh in an ambulance, where his condition was first declared serious and was declared dead early Tuesday morning.
The child was rescued around 5:30 am by National Disaster Response Force personnel. “Fatehvir has been pulled out of the borewell and he is being taken to hospital in an ambulance,” Sangrur Deputy Commissioner Ghanshyam Thori said.
A team of doctors had been stationed at the site of the accident to provide medical assistance along with an ambulance equipped with a ventilator.
Fatehveer Singh, who turned two years old on Monday, fell into the seven-inch wide borewell in a field around 4 pm on June 6 when he was playing near his house in Bhagwanpura village in Sangrur area.
The officials said, the child was stuck in the borewell and was unable to move as his face was covered with a jute bag. The jute bag had fallen on him when he slipped into the borewell. The borewell was covered with a cloth and the boy accidentally stepped on it.
While the officials managed to supply oxygen to the kid, no food or water could be provided to him after he fell into the borewell. A parallel borewell of 36 inches in diameter was dug to rescue the child. However, after the rescue team was unable to use the parallel borewell, they brought out Fatehveer Singh with his hands clamped with a rope.
On Monday, there was anger among people against the district administration and the state government over the delay in rescuing Fatehvir.
Earlier, toddler’s grandfather had claimed that the two-year-old boy, pulled out from the abandoned borewell after five days of the rescue operation, was no more.
“Why was he taken to the hospital when he is no more,” Rohi Singh, child’s grandfather, told reporters. He also claimed that the body of the child had grievous wounds. “He was pulled out (of the borewell) by using strings.”
A large number of people had assembled around the accident site and several of them raised slogans against the government. Villagers had also held a protest and blocked the Sunam-Mansa road.
