Hyderabad: Efforts to save baby Chinnari fail

Hyderabad: More than 60 hours of intensive search later, 16-month-old Chinnari’s body was excavated from the deep pit of the borewell where she had fallen on Thursday evening.

At around 6.30 am on Sunday morning, the rescue operation was brought to a halt. Based on the various data tabulated about the water level in the pit, the silt and mud that had caved in and the estimated depth at which the child was lodged, the authorities declared that the rescue operation had failed and that she was dead.

To remove her body from the pit, the authorities had to use the airlifting technique where pipes were lowered into the pit and high pressured air was pumped through the pipes into the well. As soon as the air hit the bottom, the water gushed out. With the airlifting technique, any substantial mass that is hit by the high-pressured air is blown apart. As such, the body of the dead child could not be brought out of the borewell intact. First, her clothes came out and then, mutilated pieces of her body that were all collected and placed in a plastic container and sent for autopsy at the Chevella Government Hospital. After the autopsy, the body was handed over to her parents and shifted to their native village in Yalal in Rangareddy district.

This has been one of the most tragic accidents witnessed in recent times.

Rescuers had given up hope on Saturday
Chinnari had accidentally fallen into the open borewell when she was playing with her sister close by.

The rescue operation that was monitored by the transport minister was a no-efforts-spared effort with different rescue agencies chipping in with some of the latest rescue equipment to locate the child and bring her out safely. On Saturday itself, the authorities had declared that chances of her survival were bleak.  

The 16-month-old Chinnari was the younger daughter of Yadaiah and Renuka, farm labourers who had migrated to Chevell.

Chinnari and her sister Akshitha were playing near the borewell when the accident occurred.

Immediately after the rescue was called off, officials directed their teams to cover up the pit which was dug parallel to the borewell as part of the rescue operations, to avoid any further untoward incident.