Over 38 hours after a two-year-old boy in Tamil Nadu’s Trichy district fell into a borewell, rescue teams began digging a 110-feet-deep hole in order to rescue the child.
On Friday, Sujith fell into an uncovered borewell at Nadukattupatti village while playing. Despite the efforts of over a dozen rescue teams on the ground, the child, who is now trapped at 100 feet, is yet to be rescued. As of Sunday morning, a rig of the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) has reportedly begun drilling a parallel hole through which fire and rescue personnel will enter. The hole will be 1 metre in diameter, and personnel will tunnel through to rescue the child.
Visuals from the site showed that drilling began at around 7 am. It is expected to take over an hour to dig through to 100 feet. Three fire and rescue personnel — Kannadasan, Dileep Kumar and Manikandan — are reportedly ready to enter the hole.
According to reports, a team from Chennai's Anna University confirmed through a specialised thermal camera on Saturday night that the boy was still breathing.
Initial efforts to dig a parallel hole to rescue Sujith was brought to a halt over rocky terrain. Four separate robotic devices brought in by expert groups led by Mandikandan from Madurai, Daniel from Namakkal, Sridhar from Coimbatore, and Venkatesh from Chennai also failed to yield results, with the child being firmly lodged in the borewell. According to government officials present at the site, the machines allowed for ropes to be lowered and tightened around the wrist of the child to pull him out. However, that could not succeed due to wet mud and the inability of the child to grasp the ropes. The child also steadily slipped — from 26-feet on Friday evening to about 100-feet as of Sunday morning