New Delhi: A day after three years old Sujith Wilson of Tamil Nadu was declared dead, the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) on Wednesday said that timely information to the force increases the survival chance of the victim.
Nearly five days after three-year-old Sujith Wilson fell into an open borewell near his house in Tamil Nadu's Trichy, administration on Tuesday declared him dead. The operation to rescue Sujith lasted for 80 hours.
"We used the best possible strategy to rescue the kid...There were no shortcomings from our side but yes timely information to the rescue team increase the survival chance of the victim," said Rajesh Negi, Second-in-Command of NDRF in an exclusive interview to ETV Bharat.
"Borewell rescue is a risky operation due to depth and shortage of time. Normally a rescue operation starts at the district level, then it starts at the state level and then the operation starts at the national level...in last 6-7 years we did several successful borewell operations," said Negi.
However, Sujith is not the only borewell victim.
India is the biggest user of groundwater in the world, there are approximately 27 million borewells across the country. As per reports, since 2009, more than 40 children fell into borewells and on an average 70 per cent of conventional child rescue operations remain unsuccessful.
As per NDRF data, Haryana, Tamil Nadu and Gujarat top the list of borewell incidents with almost 17.6 per cent each.
Rajasthan comes next in the list with 11.8 per cent. Karnataka with 8.8 per cent, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and Maharastra almost 5.9 per cent and Assam 2.9 per cent.
Negi said that the community should be involved in closing such borewells.
"The responsibility of such disaster is on the person who digs the borewell and the local administration who issues an order for it," said Negi.
The officer further said that the shortage of manpower also hampers the rescue work of NDRF.
"There are 12 battalions of NDRF which means we have 12,000 people to carry rescue operations across India," said Negi.
During 2014-2018, NDRF carried out several borewell rescue operations, out of which victims were rescued alive in 15 operations while the victims died in 16 operations in this five years period.
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