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Punjab govt wakes up after death of 2-year-old, closes over 2,000 open borewells

Child could not be saved despite 110-hour rescue operation in Sangrur. Amarinder Singh’s govt institutes standard operating procedures for such incidents.

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Chandigarh: Following the death of a two-year-old child trapped in an abandoned borewell in Sangrur, the Punjab government has undertaken the closure of all open borewells across the state. Probably the first state in India to do so, Punjab intends to put an end to incidents of children falling into open borewells, an accident that happens only too often in rural India.

While in many cases the trapped child is rescued following efficient multi-agency rescue operations, the latest incident in Sangrur saw an unsuccessful 110-hour rescue operation, which also brought into sharp focus the lack of standard operating procedures (SOPs) in handling such cases. This fact was also admitted to by the National Disaster Response Force, India’s top disaster management paramilitary body.

Soon after the tragedy, Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh ordered the closure of all open borewells in Punjab. Over 2,000 have been identified and shut since. Deputy commissioners have been asked to submit reports on the status of the borewells in their districts to the CM. Ferozepur, Faridkot, Sri Muktsar Sahib, and Tarn Taran districts were found free of any open borewells.

The family of Fatehveer, the child who died in Sangrur, has welcomed the government’s action, with his grandfather Rohi Singh saying: “We lost our child. But if the government covers the open borewells, at least others like Fatehveer will remain safe.”

Amarinder has also asked the state disaster management group headed by the chief secretary to finalise a set of standard operating procedures to check and prevent such incidents in future. The group, which had been constituted to tackle natural calamities, has also been asked to study the inadequacies in the relief operations, and give recommendations to ensure better and quicker operations in the future.


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Joining in the efforts, the state government has, under the Tandrust Punjab Mission, ordered that criminal action will be taken against any person who does not plug such borewells within a period of one month.

“Any mishap in such borewells should attract penalty against the owner of the land under various provisions of Indian Penal Code by lodging FIR against such persons. We are also offering a reward of Rs 5,000 to anyone who informs us about abandoned open borewells,” said Kahan Singh Pannu, chairman of the mission.

“There is no count of how many borewells there are in the state as there is no registration. Now we are making announcements in villages to farmers to account for their borewells,” said Pannu.

What happened in Sangrur

On 6 June, two-year-old Fatehveer fell into a 128-foot borewell when he was playing near his house in Bhagwanpura village in Sangrur. A massive rescue operation was launched, with the NDRF in charge and the Army standing by. The district administration was assisting the NDRF.

However, the 110-hour operation failed and when Fatehveer was pulled out after almost five days, on 11 June, he was dead. It later emerged that the child had died at least two or three days before.

A jute bag that covered the borewell when Fatehveer fell into it remained on his face through the ordeal, which is why the rescue teams could not give him any food or water. They did manage to supply oxygen to him.

The NDRF managed to tie the child’s hands with a clamp and hook within hours of the operation. However, pulling him out using the rope clamp failed when he got stuck in a narrow stretch of the borewell.

A parallel borehole was dug to send in a rescue team to bring out the child. The borehole started caving in, and lining it with concrete pipes took 46 hours, eating into precious time. The angle at which the parallel borehole was dug forced the teams to dig horizontally as well. But the child still could not be accessed as the alignment of the horizontal stretch connecting the borehole with the borewell did not match.

Finally, the body of the child was pulled out using the clamp and hook.

Criticism galore

The operation led by the NDRF came in for huge criticism from onlookers and villagers. It was alleged that the Army, despite being called in, was not allowed to take over the operation, and that it could have done a more “professional job”.

The NDRF was criticised for reaching the site of the accident too late. It was also said that the NDRF kept using hit-and-trial methods to rescue the child. Critics said the child could have been pulled out using the clamp and hook on day one, and thus saved. Villagers blocked the Sunam-Mansa road in protest blaming the district administration for the botched operation. Police had to be deployed to prevent violence.

The incident also sparked political condemnation of the Amarinder Singh government. Aam Aadmi Party’s leader of the opposition Harpal Cheema said the rescue teams were “untrained”. “This is nothing short of murdering the child due to shoddy rescue operations,” he said.

Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) president Sukhbir Badal said CM did not respond to the tragedy for more than two days. “If he had taken interest in the beginning itself, a state team of civil engineers could have been deputed. Time was wasted due to wrong placement of rescue pipes, excess digging of the second tunnel and wrong alignment of horizontal pipe,” he said.


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No SOPs

Faced with criticism, the NDRF and the district administration reviewed the operation.

“Each case of such borewell falls is unique. There are no standard operating procedures per se, not just in India, but the world over. There is no institute which trains our men in borewell rescue. Borewell rescue is a complex operation and the teams do not have many options. Nor is any specialised equipment or technology available for such operations,” said Krishan Kumar, public relations officer of the NDRF.

“In the Sangrur case, there was no lack of training or equipment of NDRF. There is no pre-defined mandate for such operations.”

Sangrur deputy commissioner Ghanshyam Thori said the NDRF team reached the spot on time. “There was no delay in starting the rescue operation. The teams managed to clamp the child’s hands within hours of the operation. The Army was called in but made it very clear that the NDRF was professionally trained for the operation and should do it. So, there was no jostling for credit as was projected,” he said.

Thori added that the NDRF tried pulling out the child every day for over four-five hours. “It was a tricky situation. It was not that he was pulled out by force only on the last day. Each day an effort was made, but stopped when it seemed it would pose a risk to his life,” said Thori.

“According to the NDRF officials, no physical harm was caused to the child during the extraction process, which had to be conducted manually as use of machinery could have potentially harmed the child, especially because of the water requirement of such equipment,” added an official communiqué from the Chief Minister’s Office.

Each case unique

In March this year, the NDRF and the army rescued one-year-old Nadeem Khan from a 60-foot deep borewell at Balsamand village in Hisar, Haryana. The NDRF had dug a tunnel connecting to the borewell. The child was provided oxygen and food items while he was in the borewell.

In Nadeem’s case too, the rescue team initially tried to pull the child with the help of a net, but he got stuck again after coming out to about five feet, and the rescue team had to abort the plan.

“In that case, the depth of the borewell was less than half of the one in Sangrur. Between 60 feet and 120 feet, the complications of a rescue operation multiply manifold,” said an official involved in the rescue operation, requesting anonymity.

In 2014, three-year-old Madhumitha died in Tamil Nadu after she was rescued from a borewell. In her case too, the rescue team tried pulling her out using a rope before digging a parallel borehole. But rocky terrain delayed the digging of the parallel well.

The same year, a six-year old boy died after remaining trapped in a 160-foot borewell in Bagalkot district in Karnataka. At one point, it was even decided to stop the rescue operations fearing that the digging of the parallel borewell could lead to the collapse of the borewell wall in which the child was trapped, smothering him under the soil. The child was declared dead before his body was finally brought out on the sixth day. The rescue teams had first decided to dig an L-shaped tunnel to reach the child. However, when that failed, a U-shaped tunnel was dug.

“Every case of borewell rescue is unique and the success of the operation depends on the age of the child, his or her physical condition after the fall, the depth of the borewell, the terrain etc. We review each case, try to understand how the operation can be improved and share best practices across our centres,” said the NDRF’s Kumar.

How big is the problem?

In 2006, five-year-old Prince, who had fallen into a borewell in a village in Haryana’s Kurukshetra, was pulled out safely after nearly 48 hours, as the country watched the rescue operation on television.

But no lessons were learnt, and incidents of children falling in uncovered borewells continue unabated. The 2015 National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) report on accidental deaths and suicides in India recorded that the number of those who fell in borewells across the country had increased from 48 in 2014 to 71 in 2015.

A 2014 fact-finding report on borewell deaths in Tamil Nadu by the Union Ministry of Home Affairs had pegged deaths due to borewell falls at 561 in just two years, 2010 to 2012.

In 2010, the Supreme Court had issued a set of detailed guidelines to prevent such accidents, which included farmers informing the government before digging borewells, registration of all drilling equipment users, capping of borewells with steel plates, and filling up of abandoned borewells with soil till the top. District administrations were asked to regularly monitor the borewells through panchayats.

“But these guidelines were never followed in Punjab at least,” said AAP’s Sangrur MP Bhagwant Mann, who intends to take up the issue in Parliament.


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