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Jaipur boy retrieved from well dead

Special Correspondent

JAIPUR: The boy who had fallen into a bore well in a village near here was taken out on Friday night after Herculean efforts mounted by the Army, the Rajasthan police and the State administration, but his life could not be saved. The retrieval of the boy, Suraj, son of a labourer couple in Nimeda village in Bagru tehsil, took some 52 hours.

Suraj, wrapped in warm clothes, was rushed to the Sawai Man Singh Hospital in the City, some 15 km away from Nimeda, immediately after his rescue. The boy, second son of Omprakash and Prem Devi, was trapped in the eight-inch diameter pipe without water or food for the past two days. He could only breathe as oxygen was supplied to him into the pipe through a tube.

A close circuit camera lowered into the pipe showed only a helpless heap of human body and no details. Suraj made no sounds and the continued consumption of oxygen supplied from more than two dozens of cylinders suggested his breathing.

The five-year-old Suraj had strayed out while playing and fallen into the bore well on Wednesday around 4.30 PM. His mother who raised the alarm to attract help passed out soon after realizing the hopelessness of the situation. During the past two days both the parents were of and on in an unconscious state and were admitted to hospital more than once.

Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje monitored the rescue operations on an hourly basis while two of her Cabinet colleagues, Ghanshyam Tiwari and Sanwarlal Jat, provided moral support from the ground to the team working on the rescue.

The rescue operations, led by Colonel S.K.Sharma, were interrupted many times by rain and earth caving in at the place where digging was carried out around the bore well pipe.

The operation also disrupted for a few hours on Thursday when the crane installing cement pillars on the walls of the newly dug pits surrounding the pipe slid on the soft earth bringing under it one labourer. He was soon rushed to the hospital with serious injuries.

Suraj was finally recovered after baring the bore well pipe, said to be of 180 feet height from all four sides. As the portion where the boy had got stuck in a standing position came up above the earth he was reached.

The rescuers cut the pipe into pieces of 20 feet each. He was found in the fifth piece and was soon pulled out.

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