Question : Borewell Incidents

(a) the number of incidents of children falling down and getting trapped inside the abandoned borewells in the country during the last three years and the current year till 31st of October, State-wise;

(b) the details of the efforts made by the respective State Governments and National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) in rescuing those children with modern and latest technology;

(c) the reasons due to which the agencies failed to rescue a two year old child who fell down in a borewell in Tiruchi district of Tamil Nadu; and

(d) whether any guidelines/ framework has been evolved at the higher level to meet such challenges in future and if so, the details thereof?

MINISTER OF STATE IN THE MINISTRY OF HOME AFFAIRS
(SHRI NITYANAND RAI)

(a): The specific data in respect of Borewell incident is not received by the Ministry of Home Affairs from the States/ UTs.

(b) and (d): Borewell incident is an accident/incident and not a disaster. As such it does not fall directly under the mandate of NDRF response. However, since human lives are at stake, NDRF responds to such borewell incidents on humanitarian ground as per the requisition of the civil administration. NDRF, out of its own initiatives, has prepared an SOP on bore-well incident response for internal training and enhancing the capabilities of its responders. The SOP has also been circulated to all States/UTs.

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L.S.US.Q.NO.421 FOR 19.11.2019

(c): As per the information given by the State Government of Tamil Nadu, the two year old boy Master Sujith Wilson fell accidently into an abandoned borewell belonging to their own family in their own land on 25.10.2019 (evening) in Tiruchirappalli district of Tamil Nadu. The district administration, on receipt of the information, immediately swung into action and deployed Fire & Rescue Service, the local police and community persons. In addition, specialist teams of State Disaster Response Force and National Disaster Response Force were also deployed to supplement the rescue efforts of district administration. Teams of experts of Neyveli Lignite Corporation, ONGC, L&T and NIT Tiruchirappalli were also engaged in rescue operation. The boy could not be rescued due to the transverse opening of the abandoned private borewell whose opening was of only 4.5 inches and the entire depth was rocky with the child trapped initially at 28 feet who later slipped to 88 feet where his position was stabilized. Due to stiff rock in the borewell none of the mechanical contraptions could go below the child to stabilize the child and help in pulling the child out and instead the child slid to about 88 feet. Since mouth of the borewell was too small, recovery through cradle or winching could not be undertaken. The rocky terrain with quartz and feldspar rocks in the underneath surface made drilling of alternate parallel tunnel a very slow process. Delay was encountered since soil substrate was solid igneous rocks from 5 feet to 55 feet depth.

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