Civic team rescues mother of five, reunites her with family

KOLKATA: A mother of five spent 12 hours in a 40ft-deep water reservoir near Harish Mukherjee Road on Wednesday, incessantly crying out for help. Her wails prompted neighbours to swing into action, first trying by themselves and then seeking the help of civic workers. The three-year-old was pulled out after a three-hour effort. She was rescued unhurt and given some preliminary treatment before being reunited with her children.Neighbours say she has overcome the trauma and is back to the corner of the road with her little ones.
Residents of Shashishekhar Bose Road in Bhowanipore were woken up by the helpless barking of a dog that had slipped and fallen into the reservoir on Tuesday night. Her five pups helplessly stared down the well. Mithun Shaw, a local resident and a non-teaching staffer at Shyamaprasad College, was the first to spot the dog. “Five puppies trotting around the edge of the reservoir caught my attention first. As I went close, I saw them barking at their mother who was struggling below. I bought a rope and tried to reach it, but the reservoir was too deep. Then I fetched a mosquito net from my home, tied it to a long rope and lowered it into the pit. The idea was to get the dog to walk into it and pull it up. But it didn’t work,” said Shaw. He was joined by several others by then. But everyone soon realized that the dog could be rescued only by the civic men or the fire brigade.
Shaw then informed KMC’s dog pound and also called the fire brigade. The civic team arrived first and swung into action within half an hour. “We immediately reacted to the call and reached the spot. The dog looked terrified and was in need of help,” said Rajib Ghosh, co-ordinator (public safety wing) of the KMC health department.
Even as two civic workers climbed down a ladder and used a rope to rescue the dog, locals joined them. First, they attempted to use a lasso to pull the animal up. But the scared dog evaded them, swam away to a corner of the pit. Dog catchers Anup Kar and Balaram Ray then decided to climb down into the reservoir with a ladder and used a rope to get hold of the dog. “It was scared and had been swimming around. Eventually, we managed to catch it, tie a rope around its belly and take it out,” Ghosh said.