SANGRUR: A day after Fatehveer Singh would have turned two, he was finally pulled out from a disused 150-feet deep
borewell
at Bhagwanpura village in Punjab's Sangrur district at 5.15 am on Tuesday, but it was too late.
He was whisked away in a waiting ambulance, carrying doctors and a life-support ventilator, to Chandigarh's Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, where the doctors declared him dead on arrival. The 109-hour ‘botched’ operation, the trauma, searing heat, hunger and dehydration had taken its toll on the toddler. A statement issued by Chandigarh PGI after his post-mortem examination indicated that the death took place “a few days back”.
Those monitoring Fatehveer via a mini surveillance camera saw his hands moving last at 5.10 am, Saturday.
Hit-and-trial seemed to be the leitmotif of the entire operation. The
National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), tasked with the
rescue
, termed it their toughest challenge ever.
NDRF 7th Battalion commandant Ravi Kumar told TOI, “It cannot be termed as failed operation. NDRF though hasn't much expertise in handling such a situation (of retrieving human being from borewell), yet we did our best to retrieve the boy.”
According to NDRF plan, the child was to be brought out from the 36-inch borewell that had been dug parallel to the 9-inch wide borewell in which he had fallen. However, the volunteers and Dera Sach Sauda men who had been roped in deviated from the vertical while excavating the earth, which made it difficult for the NDRF team to locate the child by digging a connecting tunnel between the two borewells.
At the end of 109 hours, the child was finally drawn out from the borewell in which he was trapped and the two-pronged methodology adopted by the NDRF proved to be a complete failure. This fuelled tempers and led to widespread protests and blockades in the area. The people pointed out that he could have been pulled out this way on the first day itself.
After the post-mortem, a helicopter brought the toddler's body back to Bhagwanpura. The child's small wooden coffin was consigned to the flames, as crowds gathered, tears in everyone’s eyes.
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