A three-year-old girl, who fell into a 150-foot-deep borewell in Rajasthan’s Kotputli-Behror district, was brought out in an unconscious state on Wednesday.
The girl was rescued by a team from the National Disaster Relief Force after a 10-day rescue operation and rushed to hospital, officials said, according to news agency PTI.
However, the girl, identified as Chetna, was declared dead by doctors at the hospital, the report added.
According to the NDRF team in-charge Yogesh Meena, when the team brought out the girl, there was no movement in her body.
The rescue operation
Till Monday, the rescue teams of NDRF and SDRF were hopeful of completing the operation and reaching the girl, but layers of sedimentary rock have compounded the drilling work.
“Digging eight feet of soil is not a big deal. But we cannot effect a blast if there is a stone. Due to the hard rock, we are facing difficulty in drilling. The work has not stopped for a minute ever since it started,” Meena told reporters on Tuesday, according to PTI.
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On Monday, district collector Kalpana Agarwal met the girl’s family and explained to them the problems being faced in carrying out the rescue operation.
She told them that experts are being roped in to help in the rescue efforts, but since it is a very complicated operation, it is taking longer time.
The family members had earlier accused the district administration of being negligent.
Initially, the rescuers tried to pull out the girl using an iron ring attached to a rope, but all attempts failed.
After two days of repeated attempts that fetched no results, a piling machine was brought to the spot last Wednesday and a parallel pit was dug.
On Saturday, a video of a Chetna’s mother Dholi Devi surfaced in which she could be seen pleading with folded hands to rescue her daughter.
“It’s been six days… My daughter is hungry and thirsty. What if she were collector madam’s child? Would she let her be there for so long? Please get my daughter out as soon as possible,” she pleaded.
However, with each passing moment, the hopes to save the toddler diminished as the rescue team were unable to supply food or water to the girl.