Umaria (Madhya Pradesh): As dawn cracked on the horizon the 16-hour breath-taking operation to rescue the four-year-old boy Gaurav Dwivedi from a borewell in Barchhad village, Umaria district, came to an end.
The tired team members were sad as they could not save him.
Gaurav fell into a 200-foot-deep borewell at 11am on Thursday.
As soon as the news spread, the administrative officials, the police, and a team of the State Disaster Management from Jabalpur swung into action. The operation continued till 4am.
Yet, the child could not be saved, official sources said.
Immediately after the boy was taken out of the borewell, he was rushed to the community health centre where Dr Rajmani Patel declared him dead.
According to rescuers, the boy fell upside down and was stuck at the depth of 27 feet.
The officials made best efforts to provide the boy with oxygen, but as his head was down, the life-saving gas did not reach him properly, leading to his death.
Dr Patel also confirmed that breathlessness had caused his death, and that the child had died nearly seven hours after falling into the borewell.
According to villagers, the boy was playing along with others in a field outside his house.
Suddenly, a mobile phone fell into the borewell dug in the field. As he inclined forward to see the mobile phone, he too slipped into it. As a result, his head was down at the time of the chute.
Earlier in the day, a JCB machine was brought to the site and a ditch was dug to rescue the child.
As it was working slowly, a Porcelain machine was pressed into service.
Villagers said that the owner of the land had dug a borewell, but as there was no water, he left it opened.
The incident saddened the entire rescue team and the villagers who paid a tribute to the child.
Collector of Umaria, Sanjeev Srivastava tweeted: “The boy Gaurav was taken out of the borewell after the rescue operation which lasted till 4 am on Friday morning in Badchhad vilallage. Unfortunately, the child has died. The body was handed over to the relatives after the post-mortem.”
