A toddler, who fell off a speeding vehicle on a forest highway in Idukki late on September 8 while her parents were asleep, had a miraculous escape, thanks to a group of alert forest officers and tribal watchers.
Jolted by a loud wail that broke the silence of the calm night, a team led by section forest officers Jeethendranath and Sivadas, which manned the Rajamala checkpost closeby, rushed to find a child crawling on the road with bruises on her forehead and nose.
It later emerged that the girl fell from her mother’s lap at a sharp curve on the Munnar-Marayoor road that often witnessed wild animals, including elephants, moving across. The mishap occurred at the point where the road forked towards the checkpost that is the entry gate of the Eravikulam National Park.
“We initially presumed the child to have been abandoned. It was only after examining the CCTV footage did we realise that she had fallen off the vehicle. Fortunately, she crawled towards the ticket counter, probably on seeing the light there,” Munnar Wildlife Warden R. Lekshmi said.
The unsettling footage, recorded at 9.42 p.m. on September 8, shows the baby crawling across the road and attempting to climb over a railing. Abandoning her efforts, she crawls around the railing and proceeds towards the checkpost.
The child was soon rushed to a private hospital in Munnar where she was administered first-aid. By then, the Munnar police relayed information of the rescued child to all nearby police stations.
Her parents, Satheesh and Sathyabhama, realised her absence only an hour later when they had neared their house in Kambilikandam, around 40 kilometres away. The family and their relatives were apparently on their way back from a pilgrimage to Palani.
The panic-stricken couple rushed to the Velathooval police station nearby, where they were duly informed that their child was in safe hands.
The toddler was reunited with her parents by around 1 a.m. after their identities were confirmed and the child’s health condition was ascertained as satisfactory, Munnar Sub-Inspector Santhosh K.M. said.
