Hisar, March 21: The operation to rescue the one-year-old boy who fell in a borewell at Balsamand village of this district, is going on for about past 20 hours as the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), district authorities and the Army are digging another tunnel about 20 feet away from the borehole to extricate the child safely.
A senior administrative official said on Thursday that the two teams of the NDRF had been called in on Wednesday night for the operation and about 50 feet of well had been dug so far.
The rescue operation team has planned to dig a parallel well at a point about 20 feet away from the borehole in which the child was trapped. They plan to dig about 70 feet well and would reach the point where the child is trapped by digging a tunnel.
The officials said the child was safe and sound as the oxygen supply had been given inside the borehole. A night-vision camera has also been dropped in the borehole to keep a constant watch on the child who took a sound sleep.
Earlier on Thursday, the rescue team tried to pull the child with the help of a net. Though the child was trapped in the net, he got stuck after coming out to 4-5 feet and the rescue team had to abort the plan.
Around 30 personnel of the NDRF and an equal number of personnel of the Army and the local authorities are involved in the operation.
A police official said they are hopeful that the rescue operation would be complete by Thursday evening. “The operation is going on non-stop since Wednesday evening. We have chalked a strategy to reach the child and hope he would be safely pulled out by evening,” he added.
Nadeem Khan was playing in the fields when he slipped into the borehole at about 5 pm on Wednesday. A farmer had dug the borehole about two weeks ago to install a tubewell.
The accident has again brought to the fore the dangers posed by uncovered borewells, which have turned into death traps for children.
In 2006, a massive operation was launched to rescue five-year-old Prince, who had fallen into a borewell in a village in Kurukshetra. He was pulled out safely nearly 48 hours later.
