A two-and-a-half-year-old girl died after falling into a nearly 200-foot-deep borewell in Seehi village in Faridabad, with rescue teams pulling her out after a 10-hour operation early Monday, police said.
The girl, identified as Neha, fell into the borewell around 6 pm on Sunday while playing with other children. Police said the children had climbed onto a tractor parked nearby and Neha slipped and fell into the borewell.
She was pulled out around 4 am and rushed to a private hospital, where doctors declared her dead. Her body has been kept in a mortuary and a postmortem examination will be conducted to ascertain the exact cause of death, a senior police officer said.
Teams from the Haryana Police, State Disaster Response Force (SDRF), National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), Municipal Corporation and Health Department took part in the rescue operation.
An NDRF official said the team was alerted around 8 pm and reached the spot soon after. Rescuers initially heard the child crying, but the sound stopped later.
The equipment brought by the rescue team proved ineffective inside the borewell, following which a tool was fabricated at the site with the help of a local mechanic, officials said.
SDRF officials said the abandoned borewell, which had been unused for several years, contained water at a depth of around 125 feet, hampering the operation. The child was trapped upside down at a depth of about 200 feet and was eventually pulled out by her legs.
Residents of Sector-8 blamed civic authorities, alleging that the borewell had not been securely sealed.
However, Faridabad Municipal Corporation executive engineer Sanjeev Kumar said the borewell had been sealed with a lid around 15 years ago and that the civic body had received no information about the lid being removed.
"The matter would be investigated and action would be taken in accordance with the rules against those found to be negligent," he said.
(With inputs from PTI)
