Much ado about nothing: Mahi survived for only 4 hours in the well

25 June, 2012

Children falling into borewells and dying are now common incidents in India. No precautionary measures are taken. Only some media hullabullo is witnessed for a few days. But how many lives will have to be sacrificed to alert the authorities.

THE MOST tragic incident that occurred after three long days of tension and exhaustion. But it left behind many interrogations. On her very birthday celebrations she died. Mahi Upadhay, the unfortunate girl child of five years fell down into the 70-feet-deep borewell outside her house while playing with friends in the village of Khaow near Gurgaon’s Manesar area. In October 2008, two- year-old Sonu fell into a 150-feet-deep borewell. After 98 hours, he was brought out dead. Then in May 2011, 18-month-old Om Santosh Devre fell into a 70-feet borewell in an agricultural field in Nashik. The next day, the boy was brought out, dead. These are just some of cases of innocent children falling into open death traps, but clearly no lessons have been learnt. And now Mahi was found dead after 85 hours hard work put in by rescuers.

Not all the construction sites across Gurgaon are illegal. But strangely enough , there is no protection or precautionary measures adopted anywhere. Borewells are being dug indiscriminately showing dumb finger to the police and the authority. When an incident occurs, some media personnel rush along. The army is also called to intervene. All these are routine works. The media channels cover the whole incident knowing fully that borewell and the child falling in it always draw national attention. The police is hyperactive these days. Otherwise not even a police diary is written. It was a farce staged for three days near Gurgaon and people seemed to have enjoyed a thriller on the national media. All felt shocked at the end as they usually do at the end of a tragedy. It ended not with a bang, but with a whimper, of the poor parents of Mahi.

Post mortem report said that Mahi died four hours after she fell into the bore well. Dr. Dipak Mathur said that the girl child could not cope up with the suffocating situation. She might have been claustrophobic. The stamina of Prince was greater. Thus the tragedy occurred and the army jawan lifted only the dead Mahi. Very few thought that she was dead. The media hyped it and the whole nation prayed for her life but unfortuanately she had been dead much earlier.

The village of Khaow near Gurgaon's Manesar area had nothing to cheer about. It was a complicated operation and about 200 jawans from an Indian Army unit stationed in Gurgaon were called in for help. A highly specialized digger also was brought. The nation watched the whole scene for three long days with throbbing heart. The irony is that the child got the supply of oxygen only after her death, like a life boat thrown to a drowned dead person.

We understand nowadays what is happening on the Moon’s surface. But we do not know what happened only 70 feet deeper in a borewell to a child. The basic amenities are not there and we are not equipped. If anyone is saved, he or she is saved by sheer luck. Prince was saved luckily. After that no child survived after falling in a well. In West Bengal, a youth fell in an abandoned well and only his dead body was rescued. Very much expected in a country where the police do not take an accident case easily and the hospitals do not take an accident case without the police case. So it is inevitable that the person who is a victim of an accident is sure to die. His/her survival is sheer stroke of luck.

District Magistrate P C Meena confirmed that Mahi did not survive the brutal conditions inside the borewell. Doctors say prima facie it appeared that Mahi had died within a few hours of the fall. She had fallen into the borewell on June 20, just a day after her fifth birthday. In July 2006, five-year-old Prince fell into a borewell 60 feet below the ground in Haryana's Kurukshetra. He was lucky to survive and was rescued in a 48-hour operation. Mahi was unlucky like Santosh or Sonu. They could not overcome the trauma and the delay that the administration usually does in dealing with a situation in India, be it Haryana or Bengal.