The Tamil Nadu government’s Information Technology Department has proposed a hackathon to identify technical equipment that could aid in the rescue of children stuck in borewells. This, after Sujith Wilson, a two-year-old child in Trichy district, Tamil Nadu, was declared dead on Tuesday.
After a four-day battle to rescue him, the child's body was retrieved from the borewell he fell into while playing near his home in Nadukattupatti village. While fire and rescue personnel rushed to the spot, the SDRF and NDRF were also called in to dig a parallel hole to reach the boy. When all attempts at rescue failed, the stench of a decomposing body finally forced rescue personnel to lift the body out with hooks.
According to a Facebook post by Santhosh Babu, Principal Secretary, IT Department, the hackathon would find a solution to borewell rescues. “The IT Department proposes to have a Hackathon for a solution to this..... I feel guilty that we didn’t have one... but better late than never... The first prize for the best solution will be ₹5.00 lakhs which should be working prototype equipment for rescuing children from borewells /tunnels. Anybody/startup/company who comes with a workable solution will be rewarded.” (sic) he wrote.
He added that the solution could be, among others, either at a permission level for drilling a borewell itself where the latitude-longitude have to be captured and put on a website or a device much like a bronchoscope which can remove foreign bodies in the bronchus, where a pipe once it reaches the child, can put out tentacles around the child and pick him/her up, similar to a Da Vinci robotic arm.
He wrote, “It’s been a heartbreaking Deepavali for all of India, especially Tamil Nadu....another precious life has been lost to sheer negligence....let this be the last death of a child in India....we need urgent solutions.”
In a statement on Tuesday, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Edappadi Palaniswami said that all citizens must ensure that the borewells in their fields are covered or closed. Abandoned borewells are to be converted into rainwater harvesting structures according to the Tamil Nadu Water Supply and Drainage (TWAD) Board.