The body of four-year-old Jihad was found yesterday afternoon inside the nearly 500-foot abandoned well in the capital’s Shahjahanpur Railway Colony, around 23 hours after the boy had fallen into it.
The body was found at a depth of around 258ft by the use of a handmade tool produced by five volunteers.
Local people were able to bring the child out just 10 minutes after the fire service had suspended its rescue operation formally around 2:50pm as it failed to trace and rescue the boy although they were using various methods since Friday afternoon.
Jihad’s body was brought up by the improvised “catcher” when the fire service officials were wrapping up and the locals and media persons were almost leaving the place.
His body was taken to the Dhaka Medical College Hospital immediately. Dr KM Riaz Morshed, residential surgeon of the hospital’s emergency ward, declared him dead around 3:45pm.
“At the primary examination, we suspect that the boy had died three to four hours back. It will be clear once we get the post mortem examination report,” the physician said.
The Dhaka Tribune contacted Mofizur Rahman, additional chief engineer of railway (east), to get a clear picture of the pipe’s depth.
Assessing the primary set up of the well, he said: “We assume that a 16-inch-wide pipe goes 350 feet down while another eight-inch one stretches more than 130 feet.”
The pump was built to supply fresh water to the colony with the help of a shallow machine, set up at a depth of nearly 246ft, through a two-inch-wide pipe inside the 16-inch one. Now abandoned, the well was covered with a metal cap a year ago.
Jihad fell into the well accidentally around 3pm on Friday while playing with other children.
On receiving information, fire fighters arrived at the spot and launched the rescue operation around 4pm. They talked to Jihad and sent him oxygen, water, juice and also a torch light. Later, they tried repeatedly to bring him out with a rope, but failed.
After 7:30pm, they lowered a sack tied to the rope with the hope that Jihad could get on it, but in vain. The fire fighters brought a crane and removed the two-inch-wide pipe to make room for the boy to be brought out, and until 11pm, they were able to bring out and cut down nearly 246ft of the pipe along with the pump.
Rescuers say that the boy fell further down after the pipe was cut.
Around midnight, a volunteer named Bashir Ahmed, who also actively took part after the Rana Plaza collapse, reached the spot and expressed his wish to go down and bring the child out. But the fire fighters would not allow him.
As per suggestions of Buet and LGRD experts, the fire fighters, around 1am sent a high resolution borehole camera, provided by Wasa, inside the pipe to locate the child. At 2:30am, the camera could reach nearly 256ft but got stuck in the regiform sheets.
Around 3am, the Director General of fire service Brig Gen Ali Ahmed Khan said they had failed to trace any human life inside the well. He also expressed doubt whether Jihad had really fallen into it.
A similar statement came out from State Minister for Home Affairs Asaduzzaman Khan. He declared around 3:15am that there had been none trapped in the well and suggested that the incident could be a rumour.
The rescue operation almost stalled following their statements. However, locals demanded that it continued.
At that time, five volunteers – Md Faruq, Shah Md Abdullah Al Moon, Sujon Dash Ruhul, Abu Bakar Siddique and Abdul Kader Chowdhury – came forward. They made the “catcher” with iron rods in association with a private company named “Icon.” It has a net, a CCTV camera and a torch light.
They sent the “catcher” down the pipe around 9am yesterday with the help of a crane, but failed repeatedly as the CCTV cable was creating problems. Until 2pm, they were able to send the tool nearly 300ft down and became successful around 3pm.
The fire service chief last night said the body was found just under the regiform sheet, 258ft deep.
Volunteer Faruq, a small businessman in the capital’s Bashundhara area, told the Dhaka Tribune: “We sent the ‘catcher’ with a 600-foot rope. After it went down nearly 300 feet, we felt something hard and through the CCTV camera we saw that the ‘catcher’ had hooked into something.”
Soon after the body was retrieved, angry locals of the colony brought out a procession demanding punishment to those responsible for the incident. They also chanted slogans demanding resignation of the home state minister for announcing that there had been nobody inside the well.
The angry mob also vandalised a police outpost near the spot and totally demolished a makeshift house made by the contractor company who built the pipeline.
Mehedi Hasan, officer-in-charge of Shahjahanpur police, and a number of police officials went to the spot and brought the situation under control around 4:15pm. Additional law enforcers were deployed in the area and no one was hurt during the rampage, he said.
Meanwhile, Bangladesh Railway authorities formed a three-member probe body with the third Dhaka divisional engineer as its head. The committee has been asked to submit report within 24 hours, Ahmed Ullah Shia, chief engineer of railway, told the Dhaka Tribune.
Asked about taking action against those responsible, he said: “We have already discussed the matter with our legal adviser. Primarily, we have decided to take action including filing of a case soon after getting the report.”
On Friday, railway authorities suspended its senior sub-assistant engineer Jahangir Alam and blacklisted contractor firm AR Traders for negligence.