10-year-old boy who fell into borewell in MP's Guna dies

A 10-year-old boy, who fell into a 140-ft-deep borewell in Madhya Pradesh's Guna district, lost the battle for life despite hectic efforts by multiple agencies for 16 hours to save him, officials said on Sunday.

Sumit Meena slipped into the open shaft of the borewell at around 5 pm on Saturday at Pipliya village under Raghogarh assembly segment, located 50 km from the Guna district headquarters.

He was unresponsive when he was brought out at around 9.30 am on Sunday, the officials said.

The boy was rushed to a hospital in Raghogarh on life support system, Guna SP Sanjeev Sinha told PTI.

"Sorry to say, he is no more," Guna district chief medical and health officer Dr Rajkumar Rishishwar told reporters at the hospital.

"The child was in the narrow borewell for the entire night in the chilly weather. His hands and feet were drenched and swollen. His clothes were also wet and mud was found in his mouth," he said.

Doctors examined whether the body parts froze due to hypothermia (a condition that occurs when the core body temperature drops below 95 degrees Fahrenheit), he said.

Rescuers worked through the night and dug a parallel pit to reach the boy via a passage between the pit and borewell, Raghogarh Congress MLA Jaivardhan Singh told PTI over phone from the spot earlier in the morning.

The boy was trapped at a depth of 39 feet in the borewell, which is around 140-ft deep, Guna Collector Satendra Singh said on Saturday.

The borewell did not strike water, and hence no casing had been put on it, he said.

The NDRF team reached there from Bhopal on Saturday night and helped in the operation.

The boy’s family panicked on Saturday evening when they did not see him for long.

A search was carried out and then they realised that he had fallen into the borewell, a local said.