Madhya Pradesh: Body of child who fell into borewell pulled out after 2 days

Sehore District Collector in-charge Ashish Tiwari told The Indian Express, “This is a moment of extreme sadness for us. We are here with the parents in these testing times. We found the body in a decomposed state. The post-mortem has been conducted, it appears that the girl died due to shortage of oxygen.”

Reacting to the news, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan told reporters here that the administration will take action against those who leave their borewells open.

“We had been making efforts since the day before yesterday. She initially fell 40 ft. She was a small child because of which when they tried to dig, she fell further into the borewell. I had even called the Army, we tried our best but, sometimes, things are not in our hands. This is not the only incident, there have been many incidents in the past as well, we will take action against the people responsible,” CM Chouhan said.

Superintendent of Police Mayank Awasthi informed that an FIR has been registered against the owner of the farmland and the person responsible for the borewell. Further investigation is underway, he said.

Officials said 15 minutes after the phone call was made, first responders arrived at the spot and within one hour, the SDRF teams also arrived.

“We called in the Army and it also called in a team from Gujarat which had expertise in robotics. Our biggest problem was the hard rocks obstructing our efforts in making a parallel trench; we also found a natural waterbody as we dug deeper, which hindered our rescue efforts,” Tiwari said.

The rescue teams had initially tried to use a hook to rescue the girl, but only managed to recover her frock. Later, several attempts were made by the NDRF and the Indian Army teams.

In the meantime, the authorities called in earth moving machines and over a dozen excavators to dig a parallel trench into the ground adjacent to the borewell.

Senior police officers of the district were also monitoring the situation by laying a camera cable into the borewell in hope of getting visuals of the child, but due to lack of light they were unable to see her.

The authorities had also sent oxygen tubes into the borewell to supply oxygen inside in hope of giving the girl a fighting chance.