Toddler pulled out 8 hours after falling in 130-feet-deep borewell at home, dies

At around 10 pm, the child was pulled out from the borewell in an unconscious state. However, she was declared dead at a hospital in Khambhalia. “After being rescued, she was first taken to a hospital in Khambhalia, and she was pronounced dead. Her body was brought to GG Hospital for postmortem,” Dr Nandini Desai, medical superintendent of state-run GG Hospital, said. She was stuck at a depth of 35 feet in the borewell, as per officials.

“The incident took place at around 1 pm on Monday. She fell inside when she was playing,” Ashok Sharma, District Collector of Devbhumi Dwarka, told The Indian Express, adding that a team of the Health Department rushed to the spot and started pumping oxygen in the borewell while firefighters launched a rescue operation initially.

Hitesh Bhagora, sub-divisional magistrate (SDM) of Dwarka, and GA Parmar, taluka development officer (TDO) of Kalyanpur, were among other top officials who reached the site to supervise the rescue efforts. Bhagora said that the child’s cries were audible till 3 pm but could not be heard by 7 pm, triggering concern about her well-being.

In the evening, a team of the Army from Jamnagar joined the firefighters in the operation to rescue the child. By around 8 pm, a team of the 6th battalion of the NDRF stationed in Jarod village near Vadodara reached the site after flying from Vadodara to Jamnagar and then covering the distance till Ran village by road.

Angel was the daughter of Mula Sakhra, a security guard with a private wind energy firm in the district. “The family had got the borewell drilled a few years ago but as they are poor… they could not afford a hand pump or a motor pump. So they used to draw water from the well with the help of a bucket. They would cover the borewell with a big plastic bucket when it was not being used. Angel climbed onto the bucket while playing on Monday. The bottom of the bucket broke down and she fell into the well,” Rana Movar, Mula’s cousin, told The Indian Express, adding, “Angel’s mother was near the borewell but she could do little as the child slipped inside the borewell all of a sudden.” Movar said that Angel was around 28 months old.

Sakhra’s home is located in the Plot area of Ran village. “Besides Mula’s family, the families of his three brothers live in the same compound but it being noon, everyone was busy with their lunch when the incident took place,” Movar, who is also a resident of Ran village, added.

The SDM said that while rescuers were trying to pull the girl out with the help of hooks tied to ropes, as an alternate approach, another group of rescuers started digging a rescue well near the borewell late in the evening.

While the digging of the well was going on, the NDRF team, which was equipped with special equipment for such rescue, managed to rotate the child’s body with rods and then pulled her out at 9:48 pm with the help of ropes that other rescue teams had managed to tie round the girl’s hands.

“When she was pulled out, she was in an unconscious condition. Doctors of the Health Department and the Indian Army assessed the child on the spot and then referred her to the GG Hospital in Jamnagar,” SDM Bhagora said, adding that a team of doctors was accompanying the girl to the hospital. Praveen Poonia, assistant commandant of the 6th battalion of NDRF, said that the child’s nose was touching the wall of the eight-inch diameter borewell, requiring utmost care in the rescue.

“However, with the help of rods, we succeeded in stabilising her body and then rotating the body to create space for pulling her to the surface,” Poonia told The Indian Express, adding his team flew on board a plane of the Indian Air Force that took off from Vadodara at 5 pm and landed in Jamnagar at around 6 pm. “We joined the rescue operation at around 8 pm, and pulled out the child out in one hour and 48 minutes,” he said.

The NDRF officer added that rescue with the help of ropes and rods had become critical after the team digging the rescue well near the borewell hit a hard rocky strata. “The excavators were not able to dig further after they hit a hard rock at a depth of around 17 feet. They had ordered a breaker to break that strata but they were told that the breaker would take two hours to arrive. Therefore, efforts to pull her out with the help of ropes and ropes became even more critical,” said Poonia.