Boy, 9, chasing kite falls into 45-foot borewell in Rajasthan’s Alwar; rescued

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.

Officials said the boy stepped on a stone covering the borewell and fell. Residents rushed to the spot and tried to rescue the child before alerting the police and district administration.

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. “The team proceeded cautiously to reach the child and pull him out safely.”

Sukhwant Singh, the local assembly member, also rushed to Butoli and reviewed the rescue operation.

The boy was pulled out around 11.30pm, nearly five hours after he fell into the borewell. He was rushed to the Alwar District Hospital for a medical examination. Doctors said he was fine.

The borewell fall in Alwar is the latest in such cases. In July, the Union home ministry told Parliament that the NDRF, the specialised agency tasked with responding to natural and man-made disasters, succeeded in only half of the rescue operations during borewell falls between 2020 and 2025.

Between 2020 and 2025, the NDRF carried out 37 rescue operations for children trapped in borewells across India. Only 17 of them were successful.

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. It added that 92% of the victims were under 10 and playing around borewells.

India has approximately 27 million borewells dug due to water scarcity, low rainfall, drought, and depletion of underground water. Some borewells dug several hundred feet deep remain dry. Borewells that do not fetch adequate or any water are usually abandoned. They remain open and become deadly pits called “death holes.”

In July, a four-year-old boy was pulled out dead from a 220-foot-deep borewell after a 21-hour-long rescue operation in Haryana’s Ambala. The boy accidentally stepped into the open borewell while playing.

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.