40 hrs on, one-year-old Hisar kid still trapped in borewell

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Hisar, March 22: It has been 40 hours and the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), district authorities and the Army are yet to rescue the one-year-old boy who fell in a borewell at Balsamand village of this district.

The team is digging another 2×2 tunnel connecting the borewell.

The NDRF team said that “they are likely to reach the child in about an hour’s time”. The officials had provided oxygen supply inside the borehole, but there was no information about the condition of child since last evening.

Two teams of the NDRF had been called in on Wednesday night for the operation to rescue the kid.  Earlier, a night-vision camera was dropped in the borehole to keep a constant watch on the child who took a sound sleep.

The rescue team had on Thursday tried to pull the child with the help of a net. Though the child was trapped in the net, he got stuck after coming out to 4-5 feet and the rescue team had to abort the plan.Around 30 personnel of the NDRF and an equal number of personnel of the Army and the local authorities are involved in the operation.

Nadeem Khan was playing in the fields when he slipped into the borehole at about 5 pm on Wednesday. A farmer had dug the borehole about two weeks ago to install a tubewell.

The accident has again brought to the fore the dangers posed by uncovered borewells, which have turned into death traps for children. In 2006, a massive operation was launched to rescue five-year-old Prince, who had fallen into a borewell in a village in Kurukshetra. He was pulled out safely nearly 48 hours later.