India / After 12-hr rescue, 3-yr-old who fell into 120-ft borewell, found dead

Hyderabad: A three-year old boy who accidentally fell into an open borewell on Wednesday evening died due to asphyxiation in Telangana’s Medak district, the police said on Thursday.

The body of Sanjay Sai Vardhan, who belonged to Patancheru in Sangareddy district on the outskirts of Hyderabad, was retrieved by National Disaster Response Force teams in the early hours of Thursday, after nearly 12 hours of intense rescue operations.

The incident took place in the boy’s maternal grandfather Mangali Bhikshapathi’s agricultural fields in Podichanpally village of Papannapet block.

Sai Vardhan, along with his parents -- Goverdhan, a photographer by profession and Naveena, a homemaker -- and two elder brothers came to the village a few days ago.

The police said Bhikshapathi had abandoned the borewell as he did not get any water even after digging 120 feet deep. On Wednesday morning, he got another borewell drilled but it also did not yield any water.

As he was getting the borewells filled one after the other, Goverdhan came there along with his wife and children.

“While his grandfather was inspecting the closure of one of the borewells, Sai Vardhan accidentally slipped into the adjacent open borewell,” the police said.

Soon after the boy fell into the borewell, police rushed to the spot along with revenue officials of Medak district to begin the rescue operations.

A 108-emergency vehicle also arrived at the spot to supply oxygen into the borewell, after locating the boy about 25 feet deep in the borewell.

Medak collector K Dharma Reddy, superintendent of police Chandana Deepthi, revenue divisional officer Sai Ram and local MLA Padma Devender Reddy also visited the village to supervise rescue operations.

The district authorities summoned teams of NDRF, which along with the revenue authorities, started digging a parallel well by roping in excavators to reach out to the boy.

“Despite our best efforts, we could not save the boy, who apparently died of asphyxiation. His body was retrieved from under the debris that fell on him at around 25 ft,” a police official involved in the rescue operations said.

The body of Sai Vardhan has been shifted to a government hospital in Medak for post mortem.