Bhubaneswar: The rescue mission for bringing out 11-year-old Rahul Sahu of Chhattisgarh has hogged headlines over the past five days. The minor boy belonging to Jajngir-Champa, displayed exemplary resilience battling challenging conditions in an 80-feet abandoned borewell pit.
Here we take a look at similar incidents which have occurred in India over the past one and a half decades. According to reports, between 2006 and 2019 over 33 deaths have occurred due to borewell-fall incidents. Similarly, from 2019 till date, several such mishaps have occurred across the country. In around 92% of cases the victim is under the age of 10.
In 2009, taking suo moto cognisance, the Supreme Court had issued guidelines for preventing fatal accidents of children falling into abandoned borewells. It had directed the states to take action as per the guidelines. In 2013, the top court revised its 2009 guidelines.
According to the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF)’s standard operating procedure (SOP) on borewell incident response, more than 40 children have been reported to have fallen into borewells across the country since 2009 to 2019. During 2019 to 2021, similar incidents continued to occur, due to negligence in filling abandoned borewells.
In July 2006, Prince, a six-year-old boy from Haryana’s Kurukshetra district, was trapped in 60-feet borewell, which had a diameter of 16 inches. Subsequently, Kharga Corps from the Ambala Cantonment was informed. After hours of attempts, the rescuers finally found another dry well near the one where Prince had fallen. Three-feet diameter iron pipes were used to connect the two wells and after 50 hours of struggle, he was finally rescued, that too on his sixth birthday.
On June 9, this year, a two-year-old boy fell into a deep borewell at a farm in Gujarat’s Surendranagar district, following which a team of the Army, fire brigade, police and health officials rushed to the spot and rescued him.
Similarly on May 22, this year, a six-year-old boy, who fell into a 100-feet-deep borewell in a village under Dasuya subdivision of Hoshiarpur district in Punjab on Sunday morning, died after he was pulled out following a 9-hour-long rescue operation.
In the latest case of Rahul, the rescue teams displayed courage and conviction during the 100-hour+ operation. The biggest challenge, in this case, was that Rahul was hearing impaired. According to sources he was also a mute kid, so it was difficult for the responders to communicate with him.
NDRF, local police and Indian Army carried out a joint operation to rescue this wonder kid who survived all odds to come out safely out of the hellhole. The safe evacuation of Rahul was no less than a miracle!
