A two-year-old girl drowned in a tub of water at her house while her parents were watching the operations to try and rescue the toddler Sujith Wilson on television, Tamil Nadu police said today.
Revathi Sanjana was playing in the tub last night as her parents sat glued to the TV at Threspuram village, watching the attempts of rescuers to try and extricate the two-year-old child, police said.
They suddenly realised she was not around and went looking for her, only to find her motionless in the bucket.
They rushed the child to the hospital, where she was declared brought dead, police said.
Rescuers pulled out the decomposed and mangled body of Sujith Wilson early Tuesday from deep inside an unused borewell, after a futile 80-hour attempt to save the child who had fallen in while playing near his house in Tamil Nadu’s Tiruchirappalli district.
The rescue operation had got delayed because of the rocky terrain. However, the teams continued their efforts to save the toddler.
The National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) and State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) have been working relentlessly since Saturday to save the boy who fell into the abandoned borewell at around 5.30 pm on Friday and got stuck at 30 feet. Later that night, he went further down the tube and got stuck at about 70 feet.
J Radhakrishnan, Principal Secretary, Revenue Administration, Disaster Management and Mitigation department had on Monday said that it might take another 12 hours to rescue the child.
However, in the wee hours of Tuesday, Radhakrishnan told reporters that the toddler’s body was now in a decomposed state as foul smell had started emanating from the borewell.
Till then, a pit had been dug up to 65 feet near the borewell.
Several teams with their own technologies tried to rescue the boy, but all of that failed.
(With PTI inputs)