80-HR RESCUE ENDS AS BOY FOUND DEAD IN TN BOREWELL
CHENNAI: After an 80-hour operation involving about 800 personnel, rescuers on Tuesday retrieved the partially decomposed body of a two-year-old child who fell into a borewell in a Tamil Nadu village, bringing to a tragic end an incident followed on TV screens across the country by people concerned over the toddler’s safety. The news of the child’s death prompted the Madras high court to pull up the government over the poor implementation of civic safety rules, and ask if it needed a corpse to enforce guidelines.
CHENNAI: After an 80-hour operation involving about 800 personnel, rescuers on Tuesday retrieved the partially decomposed body of a two-year-old child who fell into a borewell in a Tamil Nadu village, bringing to a tragic end an incident followed on TV screens across the country by people concerned over the toddler’s safety.
The news of the child’s death prompted the Madras high court to pull up the government over the poor implementation of civic safety rules, and ask if it needed a corpse to enforce guidelines.
Sujith Wilson’s body was pulled out more than three days after he fell into the abandoned borewell while playing near his house at Nadukattupatti village in Tiruchirappalli district on Friday.
“The government made all efforts to rescue the two-year-old. Unfortunately, the boy died, and it is a very heart-wrenching incident for me. I urge the landowners to close abandoned borewells immediately. A government order was passed in 2015... So, district collectors should ensure that everyone adhere to the rules,” chief minister K Palaniswami said.
Palaniswami, deputy CM O Panneerselvam and other state ministers visited the bereaved family and offered their condolences. The CM also announced a compensation of ~20 lakh for the family — ~10 lakh from the Chief Minister’s Relief Fund and ~10 lakh from the ruling All-india Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam’s funds.
“Even as the government made several efforts to rescue Sujith, we observed a decaying smell from the 600-foot borewell in which he was trapped,” Tamil Nadu revenue administration, disaster management and mitigation commissioner J Radhakrishnan told the media.
Tiruchirappalli district collector S Sivarasu said, “Since it was more than 80 hours since he was trapped there the body was almost in a decomposed state.”
Wilson’s parents buried him in a funeral conducted by the local parish priest at a nearby graveyard around 8.30am, about four hours after his body was pulled out. Rescuers tried to dig a parallel tunnel, which would connect the borewell through a hole made sideways, but the rocky terrain made the task difficult. Attempts to use robotic devices to lower ropes to latch onto the boy’s wrist failed on Saturday. A thermal camera had been used to monitor the child’s temperature while oxygen was supplied through a pipe.
Initially, the child was stuck at a depth of about 30 feet but subsequently slipped further down, and the body was finally pulled out from a depth of 88 feet, officials said.
Hours after the incident, the Madras high court orally observed whether the government needed a “dead body” for implementation of each and every rule.
A division bench of justices M Sathyanararayanan and N Seshasayee was hearing a petition seeking a direction to authorities for strict implementation of guidelines issued by the Supreme Court, and for the enforcement of the Tamil Nadu Panchayats (Regulations of Sinking of wells and Safety Measures) Rules 2015.
The plea was filed by V Ponraj, a scientist who had worked with former president APJ Abdul Kalam at Rashtrapati Bhavan.