india

Updated: Feb 21, 2019 12:41 IST

A six-year-boy, who fell into a nearly 200-feet-deep borewell in a village in Maharashtra’s Pune, was rescued without any major injury on Thursday morning after an overnight operation by the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF).

The rescue operation lasted a little over 13 hours, according to NDRF officials.

The boy Ravi Pandit Bhill fell into the borewell, near a road construction site in Thorandale village of Ambegaon taluka where his father Pandit Dashrath Bhill works as a labourer, while playing on Wednesday. They are residents of Shegaon in Parol taluka of Pune.

After police and locals failed to reach the boy stuck at around 10 feet in the borewell, NDRF was called to rescue him. One unit of 31 men from Battalion 5 of NDRF arrived from Sudumbare village in Maval, around nearly 60km away from the spot, for the operation.

“He fell in the well around 1630 hours but we received information at around 1740 hours. By the time we reached, it was 1955 hours. The operation ended at 0900 hours on Thursday,” Alok Kumar, deputy commandant of NDRF’s Battalion 5, said.

“The boy’s lower half was stuck in a rucksack or something. It was under a rock (boulder). So, we had to dig parallel to the borewell to create an access point to the boy. It is all rock under the ground surface,” Kumar said.

“And we had to ensure that the child was not injured further. So, we could use only small equipment like shipping hammer and drills. That took a lot of time,” he said.

No safety net or warning sign was visible near the open borewell owned by Namdev Sadashiv Jadhav. Pune rural police were present at the spot and will record the incident.