An unused borewell sealed the fate of three-year-old Ajay on Sunday. The toddler hurtled down 200 feet into the pipe and struggled for 19 hours as his parents and rescuers, including firemen from Ahmedabad and Mumbai and ONGC experts, looked on helplessly. More than 36 gruelling hours later, rescue workers tied up the mouth of the pipe, unable to even retrieve the boy’s body.Ajay was playing by his mother’s side as she washed clothes when the accident occurred. Around 4 pm, he perched himself on the mouth of the borewell on the cotton field, which was tied up with a cloth. The farmer had dug up a new borewell nearby and had not bothered to seal the old one. Within seconds, the cloth gave way and the three-year-old disappeared down the pipe.Ajay’s father, daily wage earner Ramjibhai, was not around and before Reethaben could reach out, her son had hit the bottom of the well. Villagers heard her screams and called in fire brigade officials from Ahmedabad. The firemen from Ahmedabad were followed by their Mumbai counterparts. Another team of ONGC drilling experts and excavation officers of Hindustan Construction Limited, at work on the Patan-Palanpur Highway, also turned up but little could be done.‘‘We lowered a video camera attached to a wire and could see him lying at the bottom,’’ says Mehnooz Dastoor, a fire official from Ahmedabad. ‘‘But the pipe was so narrow that we could not lower any equipment . A basket that was lowered got stuck half-way.’’‘‘We managed to pull him up several feet with a rope but he got stuck in a bend. We couldn’t exert more pressure or else, his hand would have been severed,’’ another official said.With no remedy in sight, Ajay’s parents asked authorities to leave his body intact inside. A case has been registered against the farmer but things remain the same. The borewell has been covered with a jute cloth, just like the one Ajay sat on.
