Rescue operations fail, 8-year-old dies in borewell

Rescue operations were called off on Saturday after eight-year-old Seema, who had fallen into a borewell near Rashidapur village in Uttar Pradesh's Farrukhabad district, about 250 kilometres from here, was presumed dead.

The little girl, a resident of Rashidapur village, had fallen into the deep borewell on Wednesday. ''Rescue operations were called off around dawn on Saturday after we realised that the girl was dead,'' said an official in Farrukhabad.

He said that the family of the girl agreed to let her be buried there.

Seema was believed to be trapped at a depth of around 40 feet in the narrow bore well.

Army was requisitioned to rescue the girl and rescue efforts were launched almost immediately after she had fallen. Initially, the girl was believed to be trapped at a depth of 25 feet but during the rescue operations, she slipped deeper hampering efforts to rescue her.

The pipe from which she was being supplied oxygen had also snapped on Friday disrupting the supply for several hours. Efforts to get her to have some water also failed, sources said.

''The soil condition also proved to be an obstacle...mounds of sandy soil often caved in creating problems for us,'' said the official.