Images posted on local and social media show aid workers standing around the well and keeping the public at bay. A rope disappears into the opening of the well. In addition, an excavator is digging a deep pit. Perhaps the place where the boy is in the well can then be reached through a tunnel.
Tanmay Sahu was playing with friends at a farm near Betul in central India on Tuesday afternoon when he fell into the well around 5pm. Since then he has been stuck in the tunnel at a depth of about sixteen meters, with his arms raised. “My 12-year-old daughter saw him and told me he had fallen into the well. We rushed there right away,” Sunil Sahu’s father told local media earlier. “He was breathing and we listened to the sound he made in the well.”
The rescue services were called. They arrived on the scene during the night and have been working tirelessly ever since to rescue the boy.
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The rescuers pump oxygen into the well for the child. There is still a lot of uncertainty about his condition, because they cannot reach him. Tanmay is no longer making a sound, so he may have lost consciousness. Although the authorities yesterday expressed the hope that they would be able to undertake a rescue attempt ‘within two to three hours’, this turned out to be a vain hope. Stones and mud in the pit made the rescue operation take longer. Earlier it was not possible to pull the boy out of the well with a rope, local media report.
Shivraj Singh Chauhan, the prime minister of the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh where the accident took place, posted a response on Twitter on Tuesday evening: ‘I have asked the local government to take the necessary measures. I am in constant contact with the authorities. The rescue team tries to save the child. I pray for his well-being and that he succeeds’.
Due to water shortages, farmers in India often build wells to irrigate their fields. If the wells do fall dry later, they are not always filled in or covered, with all the associated risks. According to the BBC it happens more often in India that children end up in dried up wells. In June of this year, an 11-year-old boy became deaf Rescued from a well in India after four days.
The accident is also reminiscent the death of 2-year-old Julen. The Spanish boy fell into a dry well in 2019. After a rescue operation that lasted for days, in which the whole country sympathized, Julen was pulled lifeless from the pit.