29 hrs later, Bihar girl rescued from borewell, is stable
BHAGALPUR: After nearly 29-hour ordeal, Sana, a three-year-old girl, was successfully rescued late Thursday evening around 9.30pm from a 100-feet deep borewell she fell into at Murgiyachak locality of Munger on Tuesday evening.
The National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) and the State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) had launched a joint effort to rescue the child who was trapped at a depth of 43 feet.
Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar expressed his happiness and relief at the rescue act.
Sana, daughter of Nachiket Sah, a bank employee and resident of Chaiti Durga Mandir locality in Munger, was rushed to the nearest hospital and her condition was stable.
A student of Montessori House of Children, Norte Dame, Munger, she had slipped into the borewell while playing with other children on Tuesday. The borewell was being dug inside the house of her maternal grandfather, Umesh Nandan Prasad Sah, who she went visiting with her mother two days earlier. The two houses are one kilometer apart.
Principal secretary, disaster management department, Pratyaya Amrit, said, “The army was kept on standby at Ranchi, but we did not have to requisition its services as the NDRF and SDRF did a commendable job.”
Earth was dug horizontally and then a parallel vertical hole dug to rescue the child. All along oxygen supply was maintained to the child externally. In order to ensure safety of the child, the rescue team resorted to manual digging when they reached near the site where the child was trapped.
Earlier, three members of the NDRF, with some equipment, were airlifted from Patna and another team was dispatched by road on Wednesday afternoon, said NDRF commandant Vijay Sinha.
The Munger administration had initiated rescue operation immediately on receipt of information, requisitioning the SDRF from Khagaria.
Divisional Commissioner, Munger, Pankaj Kumar Pal, monitored the rescue operation.
Though there was no national register of children getting trapped in borewell shafts, the number with the home ministry in Delhi showed that accidental deaths of children up to 14 years due to a fall in pits and manholes had gone up from 175 in 2010, to 192 in 2011 and further to 194 in 2012. The largest number of these child casualties was reported from Madhya Pradesh (67 children killed in 2012), followed by Maharashtra (39), Uttar Pradesh (19), Gujarat (18) and Tamil Nadu (13).