Indepth Rescuer boon for kids trapped in borewells

Bhopal, July 15 (UNI) Here's good news for kids who suffer a fate similar to Haryana's Prince.

Mechanical engineering students of the city's Barkatullah University have come up with a cost-effective device for rescuing children from borewells and narrow ditches.

Mayank Jain, Gaurav Bhargava, Ashish Muchrikar and Ashutosh Shrivastava -- all in their early twenties -- used a heavy doll to test their Indepth Rescuer whose objective is to save kids from writhing in pain in dark depths.

Prince was among those fortunate ones rescued by digging a parallel hole and perpendicular tunnel but three-year-old Suraj from Jaipur district's Nimad village recently died due to a delay in rescue after he fell into a borewell.

The final year students were supervised by Prof Dinesh Agarwal.

''There was an 80 per cent chance of success in Suraj's case if this device had been used but we could not make the endeavour as it was undergoing further modification at Delhi University,'' Bhargava told UNI while adding they were also trying to approach the city-based Disaster Management Institute to make the Rescuer more robust.

Prof Agarwal said that their project, though successful, was yet to be commercialised. ''However, we could have saved the child if we had the opportunity as we tested the device's strength more than ten times using a heavy doll as victim,'' he added.

''The Rescuer takes hardly two hours while sinking a well by a JCB machine may take 40-45 hours. It costs about Rs 2,000 and is easy to operate,'' claimed Jain.

Without employing heavy machinery, the device can reach where human hands cannot and is more powerful as it is equipped with camera and mike.

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