2-year-old falls into deep tube-well shaft in Rajshahi
Staff Reporter :
A two-year-old boy slipped into an abandoned deep tube-well shaft roughly 30 feet deep in a field in Tanore upazila of Rajshahi on Wednesday that triggered frantic rescue efforts by firefighters and villagers.
The child, named Shwadhin, is the son of Rakib Uddin and Runa Khatun from Koel Hat Purbo Para village in Panchandar union, police reported.
ccording to local witnesses and officials, a trolley carrying earth had sunk when one of its tyres went deep into the ground at midday.
Curious, Rakib and his wife, carrying Shwadhin in her arms, went over to inspect the stuck trolley. Around 1:00 pm the boy got down from his mother’s lap and started wandering nearby – and in a moment his foot slipped and he fell into the narrow, disused shaft.
His parents attempted to pull him out but failed. Alerted by the villagers, firefighters arrived; together with local residents they began digging beside the shaft to reach him.
The officer-in-charge at Tanore Police Station, Shahinuzzaman, said the rescue was still underway, while a Fire Service official, Abdur Rouf, noted that even using excavators so far they had not retrieved the child, and it was unclear whether he was alive. As of the last update at 9:30 pm, efforts to unearth him continued.
Earlier on 26 December 2014, a 4-year-old boy named Jihad fell into an abandoned deep-water pipe – a narrow shaft reportedly left by public utilities – inside Shahjahanpur Railway Colony in Dhaka while playing near his home with other children.
The shaft was described as being just 17 inches in diameter and hundreds of feet deep.
Firefighters and emergency teams rushed to the scene, lowering oxygen and sending down ropes and sacks in hopes of pulling him out.
Despite their efforts over nearly 23 hours, the official rescue operation was called off when cameras sent down failed to locate him.
Shortly afterward, a group of local volunteers – frustrated by the authorities’ decision to abandon the effort – improvised a makeshift metal cage and successfully retrieved the child’s body at around 3:00 pm the following day.
Medical examination later determined that Jihad had died – likely from drowning in the water at the bottom of the shaft, as well as suffering head injuries from the fall.
The tragedy sparked public outrage. In subsequent legal proceedings, a court sentenced several individuals – including engineers and contractors from the public utility agency responsible – to 10 years’ imprisonment for negligence.
The resemblance between the two incidents is striking: in both cases, small children playing near home fell into disused shafts or pipes, and rescue efforts proved difficult because the openings were narrow and deep – leading, tragically, to loss of life in the Shahjahanpur case.