Maharashtra: 5-year-old boy stuck in borewell dies

Pune, Jun 27: A five-year-old boy who accidentally fell into an open borewell at a village in Maan taluka of Satara district of Western Maharashtra this morning died.

As soon as the team of rescue workers managed to retrieve the child from the borewell in the early hours today, they rushed him to a local hospital where doctors declared him dead. Mangesh Jadhav from Virali village in Maan tehsil fell into the borewell at an agricultural field in the village, located around 85 kms from the Satara district headquarters, at about 2.30 pm yesterday.

Local administration along with the fire brigade, a medical team, police personnel and members of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) had launched an operation to rescue the boy. They managed to pull him out at around 2 am.

"The boy was immediately taken to hospital. However, he was declared dead on arrival," Mhaswad police station's assistant police inspector Malojirao Deshmukh said. An official from NDRF's rescue team said that when the boy was pulled out at around 2 am from a depth of nearly 20 feet, his face was covered with mud and soil.

The boy probably died of suffocation, he said. "By the time, we reached the spot at 9.45 pm yesterday, a lot of mud had gone inside the hole as people from the village were trying to rescue him from the borewell," said the official.

Mhaswad police said a case of accidental death has been registered and further investigation is going on. The boy's parents are farm labourers. Several children have lost their lives after falling into deep open borewells, due to negligence of farm owners and other authorities.

Two days back, rescue workers pulled out dead a 14-month girl, who had accidentally slipped into an open borewell in Telangana's Ranga Reddy district last week. In April this year, a six-year-old girl died after falling into a 400-feet deep borewell in Athani taluka of Karnataka's Belagavi district.

Last year, a four-year-old boy was pulled out from a 200-ft borewell after 31 hours of rescue operation at a small village near Shirur, about 63 kms from Pune, but he died on way to hospital.

PTI