Girl stuck in borewell in MP's Sehore rescued after more than 52 hours; op includes robotic team

A two-and-half-year-old girl who fell into a 300-foot borewell in Sehore in Madhya Pradesh was rescued on Thursday evening in an operation that lasted more than 50 hours and saw a robotic team joining personnel from the Army, NDRF, SDERF and earth movers.

The girl, who had fallen into the 300-foot borewell in Mungavali village at around 1am on Tuesday, was rescued at 5:30pm on Thursday and was rushed to the district hospital in an ambulance for a thorough check up, an official said.

He however, did not disclose details of her condition.

While Chief Minister Shivarj Singh Chouhan on Wednesday said the girl Srishti was initially stuck at 40 feet and slid down further to 100 feet due to vibrations of machines used in the rescue operation, an official at the site informed the child had slipped further to 134-135 feet before being rescued.

Personnel from multiple agencies, including the Army, were in a race against time to save the girl, with oxygen being supplied to her through a pipe and rescuers facing the challenge of rain and gutsy winds since morning in the area, officials said.

A team of robotic experts from Gujarat had joined the operation on Thursday morning to save the girl.

A robot was lowered into the borewell to collect information about the child's condition and the data was being used to contemplate the next course of action in the rescue operation, the robotic team in charge Mahesh Arya had told reporters at the site.

The rescue operation comprised personnel from the Army, the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) and the State Disaster Emergency Response Force (SDERF) along with equipment including 12 earth-movers, officials at the site said.

The incident has once again brought to the fore the dangers posed by open and abandoned borewells.

On Saturday, a two-year-old girl slipped into a narrow borewell in Gujarat's Jamnagar district and got stuck at a depth of 20-feet. She died despite hectic rescue efforts by multiple agencies for 19 hours.

In 2009, the Supreme Court issued guidelines for preventing fatal accidents of children falling into abandoned borewells.

The revised guidelines issued by the court in 2010 included setting up barbed wire fencing around the well during construction, using steel plate covers fixed with bolts over the well assembly and filling up of borewells from the bottom to the ground level.