TIRUCHY: Hundreds of people from surrounding villages swamped the burial ground in Fathima Puthur village on Tuesday morning to pay final respects to Sujith Wilson, the two-year-old boy who was stuck in a borewell near his house for over 80 hours.
Sujith, of Nadukkatupatti village, died despite a mammoth 80-hours rescue attempt by officials.
On October 25, he had fallen into a 600-feet borewell located near his house. While the rescue work had started within an hour of the incident, the efforts went in vain. The rescue team tried various techniques with an aim to bring him out alive.
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The officials made a formal announcement at 2.15 am on October 29 that Sujith was dead after his body was recovered in a decomposed and dismembered state.
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Several difficulties, including weather condition and soil nature hampered the progress delayed the rescue operations for four days.
Speaking to the media, Tamil Nadu Revenue Principal Secretary J Radhakrishnan said, "Sujith's body was found heavily decomposed and dismembered."
Following the announcement, NDRF and SDRF teams recovered as many parts as possible within two hours. The body parts were packed and sent to Manapparai Government Hospital for postmortem. They were then brought straight to the crematorium for the final rites.
As the ambulance arrived, hundreds of people gathered and cried in grief when the coffin box was placed for Sujith's last rites.
State ministers including C Vijayabaskar, Vellamandi N Natarajan and Karur MP Jothimani paid their last respects to Sujith before he was buried.