Four-year-old boy rescued from borewell dies on way to Pune hospital in Maharashtra

Pune: Hopes turned into despair for the family of a four-year-old boy who was rescued today from a 200-feet borewell in Mandanwan village but died on his way to a city-based government hospital, a medical officer said on Sunday.

Sunil More, son of a labourer, fell into the borewell while playing yesterday.

The rescue operations, conducted by a team comprising 27 National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) personnel, fire brigade and police officials, lasted for over 30 hours as they extricated the boy at around 7.45 PM.

According to Deputy Commandant Sacchidanand Gawade of NDRF's 5th battalion, Sunil was unconscious when rescued but his pulse was on, following which he was first rushed to a private hospital in the village.

However, as his condition deteriorated he was being transferred to state-run Sassoon Hospital in Pune but died midway.

"He has been declared dead on arrival and his body will be sent to postmortem," a Resident Medical Officer on duty at Sassoon Hospital told PTI tonight.

Earlier, Gawde said, "We had to dig a parallel hole to the borewell. During the exercise, the rescue team had to face a daunting task as a solid rock was found underneath and it led to the delay."

According to Gawade, after digging vertical at around 22 feet, the rescuing team dug horizontally to reach to the boy, who was stuck at 20 feet into borewell and eventually he was pulled out.

"Even though, his lower part of the body was freed from the horizontal tunnel, the rescue team had faced hardships while freeing his upper part of the body as his neck was trapped against a rock," he explained.

The oxygen was being pumped inside the hole to make sure that Sunil did not face any difficulty while breathing.