Efforts to rescue two year-old Chandrasekhar from the 20-feet deep borewell near Vinukonda, in which he was stuck since Tuesday evening, ended on a happy note as he was successfully brought out by the personnel of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), State Disaster Response and Fire Services Department and the police after nearly 12 hours.
Few had expected the child to emerge unscathed from the abandoned borewell, though the depth to which he had slipped was just 15 feet. A sudden spell of rain threatened to throw the rescue efforts haywire as water started entering both the bore and an alternative pit dug by its side. However, the workers quickly arrested the flow of water by pouring heaps of sand around the bore.
A makeshift tent with a tarpaulin cover was erected to prevent rain water from directly falling into the hole. Another thing that delayed the rescue operation by a few hours was a big limestone rock which obstructed the digging of the pit adjacent to the bore as it had to be drilled the hard way using a hydraulic machine.
There was a time when the child had stopped responding to calls apparently due to fatigue but then he was back in his senses a short while later. Towards the end of the rescue efforts around 3 a.m. on Wednesday, the workers kept up contact with the child by sending a mobile phone inside the bore and it paid off.
Chandrasekhar was exhausted and in a state of shock but came out without any major injury much to the delight of his parents Mallikarjun and Anusha who kept praying to the almighty to see that their beloved son was out safely. Hundreds of people who waited there with bated breath also turned ecstatic.
District Collector K. Sasidhar and rural SP Ch. V. Appala Naidu personally supervised the rescue measures right from the beginning and they too were elated that the collective efforts had yielded the desired result.
NDRF 10th battalion (Mangalagiri) Commandant Sk. Zahid Khan said the rescue team had started working after spotting the child with improvised CC cameras and battled heavy odds. The success was a rare instance as in most such cases, including the one in Ranga Reddy district in Telangana, the girl who got stuck could not be saved.
