5-yr-old falls in bore well, rescue ops on

A five-year-old boy fell into a bore well in Agaryala village Mathura district in Uttar Pradesh on Saturday afternoon.

Rescue operations began after the district administration and Mathura police were informed.

The boy, Praveen, had accompanied his mother, Surjo, a farm labourer, to harvest the farm owned by Hukum Singh. The incident happened when Praveen and two other children were playing on the field, which is under the jurisdiction of Shergarh police station.

“The borewell had been dug earlier and they covered it with a sack. However, when the children were playing near the borewell, the sack allegedly shifted and Praveen fell in to the borewell believed to be 100 feet deep. When the other children cried for help, the villagers gathered and informed the police,” said Aditya Shukla, the Superintendent of Police Rural for Mathura.

During the rescue operations, the child was provided oxygen.

“A team of National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) has been called in. Arrangements to provide oxygen in bore well have been made,” Shukla said.

A JCB has been brought in to dig near the borewell, officials said. The child has also been provided with juice and biscuits.

“We sent a CCTV camera down the bore well. We saw the boy clinging on a pipe descending through the bore well. All efforts are on to save the child,” Shukla said.

A unit of the Army has also been called in, people familiar with the development said.

Recently, the operations to pull out an eight-year-old girl from 60-foot bore well in Uttar Pradesh’s Farrukhabad district were called off after experts suggested that nearby houses had developed cracks and could cave in if digging was not stopped.