A nine-year-old boy, who fell into an open 45-foot borewell while chasing a kite at Butoli in Rajasthan’s Alwar district, was rescued after a five-hour operation on Monday night.
Residents rushed to the spot and tried to rescue the child before alerting the police and district administration. “The team proceeded cautiously to reach the child and pull him out safely. Between 2020 and 2025, the NDRF carried out 37 rescue operations for children trapped in borewells across India. Only 17 of them were successful. It added that 92% of the victims were under 10 and playing around borewells. In 2006, five-year-old Prince Kumar in neighbouring Kurukshetra district was rescued after a 50-hour ordeal inside a 60-foot borewell. Several such incidents prompted the Supreme Court in 2010 to issue strict guidelines mandating the capping of borewells and filling of abandoned ones with clay or sand within a time frame.
Officials said the boy stepped on a stone covering the borewell and fell. Alwar additional police superintendent (rural) Priyanka Raghuvanshi said a National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) team was rushed to Butoli for the rescue operation with the assistance of experts. An NDRF report titled “Borewell Rescue Precis” said over 40 children fell into borewells across India between 2009 and 2017, including seven each in Tamil Nadu and Madhya Pradesh.
