SAHIWAL: A Rescue 1122 team on Tuesday safely recovered a four-year-old child who had fallen into a 50-foot deep and only 12-inch wide borehole drilled into the ground for pumping out water at 101/9-L village.

According to locals, the ground was drilled on Monday to install a tubewell pipe to get water in the village, but the borehole was left without a lid.

They said that on Tuesday, four-year-old Adeeb, son of Nauman Ejaz, a field labour, fell into the borehole accidentally while he was playing there.

Finding no other way to rescue the child, the locals called Rescue 1122 emergency service and informed them of the incident.

A seven-member Rescue 1122 team immediately reached the spot and started efforts to recover the child.

The team, tied an iron hook at the end of a rope and lowered it into the borehole to pull the child out.

A team member said that the task seemed difficult because the child was too young to catch the hook. Finally, after 90-minute hectic efforts, the hook got entangled into the child’s clothes and he was safely pulled out of the borehole.

The recovery brought a sigh of relief to the locals, especially the parents and relatives of the child, who thanked the rescuers – Ali Sher, Waqar, Imran, Rana Naveed, Hafeez, Zeeshan and Yousaf – for reuniting them with the child.

The rescuers said the child was safe and suffered no injury during the operation.

Published in Dawn, November 7th, 2018