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After 21 hours, 4-year-old Ambala boy pulled out dead from borewell
Post-mortem reveals Nirvair Singh died of drowning and severe impact injuries to head, chest, and knees.
Karnal: The four-year-old boy who fell into a 220-foot-deep open borewell in Haryana’s Ambala district on Tuesday morning was pulled out dead early on Wednesday following a 21-hour multi-agency rescue operation.
Police said the child, Nirvair Singh, was brought to the surface at 3.45am and immediately rushed by ambulance to the sub-divisional civil hospital in Ambala Cantonment, where doctors declared him brought dead.
Dr Rishi Kamboj, medical officer at the hospital’s Trauma Centre, said the body arrived at around 4am. The post-mortem revealed multiple injuries to his head, chest, and knees. Dr Kamboj said that the cause of death was a combination of these traumatic injuries and drowning, as doctors found muddy water inside the child’s body.
Ambala superintendent of police Ajit Singh Shekhawat said that a first information report (FIR) has been registered for death due to negligence under Section 106 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) against unknown accused for leaving the abandoned borewell uncovered.
A joint team from the army, National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), and State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) finally managed to retrieve the body using specialised hooks and equipment after multiple attempts. The rescue teams had initially planned to dig a parallel shaft on Wednesday if conventional retrieval methods continued to fail, but they were restricted by the presence of two high water tables that threatened to instantly flood any newly excavated pits.
The incident occurred around 6:30am on Tuesday in Dhaneora village. Nirvair had accompanied his father, Manjit Singh, to the family’s fields to deliver breakfast to his grandfather, Karnail Singh, who was already working there. While the adults were occupied with their chores, the child accidentally stepped into the open, abandoned borewell, which had a narrow 9-inch diameter.
After their own initial, unsuccessful attempts to pull him out, the family alerted local authorities at around 7am, prompting an extensive rescue operation supervised by Ambala deputy commissioner Ajay Singh Tomar.
The tragedy has left the family shattered, coming just a day before Nirvair was supposed to take his very first steps into school. The boy had been adamant about visiting the farm one last time before starting this new phase of his life. The son of an electricity board employee and the younger sibling to a 12-year-old sister, Nirvair had only recently returned home to the village from Kurukshetra after spending a few days visiting his maternal grandmother.
