Rajasthan boy who fell in borewell in Ujjain dies

Ujjain: A two-and-a-half-year-old boy from Rajasthan, who had fallen into a borewell in Ujjain's Badnagar tehsil on Thursday evening, was pulled out unconscious after a 21-hour rescue operation on Friday only to be declared dead at Badnagar Civil Hospital.Bhagirath, son of Pansaram alias Praveen Devasi of Gudanala village in Pali district, was playing near a borewell on Ayub Khan's farm in Jhalariya village on Palduna road when he fell into the well and got trapped at 60 to 70 feet. His uncle Paras said that the child pushed aside the cover of the borewell and attempted to sit with one leg inside — which his mother witnessed before slipping in.A 200-member NDRF and SDRF team from Bhopal, Harda and Indore launched rescue operations by 9 pm Thursday. Two parallel approaches were pursued —extraction through the borewell itself, and digging a canal-like pit nearby, which was excavated to over 50 feet using earth moving machines and hammer drills. The Harda SDRF team eventually succeeded by using a borewell-improvised tool kit along with an underwater camera to locate the child, loop his hands and pull him to the surface with support from below.Medical officer Dr. Suyash Srivastava confirmed the child was brought in by ambulance and had already died. The body was handed over to the family after postmortem examination.SP Pradeep Sharma said that the family has been camping on Ayub Khan's farm for several years during their annual passage from Rajasthan. A case of unnatural death has been registered.The family had been preparing to leave that very day for a wedding in Pali. Bhagirath's maternal aunt said he had been given new clothes for the occasion and had spent the previous day excitedly wearing them around the house.