Palaniswami visited the aggrieved household and offered his condolences to the family and announced a solatium of Rs 10 lakh on behalf of the state government and Rs 10 lakh on behalf of the party.
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami on Tuesday urged the public to cover borewells and tubewells as he ordered the district collectors to ensure that the rules already in place were adhered to.
In a statement after visiting the grieving family of Sujith Wilson who died after falling in a borewell, Palaniswami urged officials to take strict action against those who were found responsible for open borewells.
The mortal remains of two-year-old boy Sujith Wilson was retrieved in the wee hours of Tuesday from the unused tubewell after over 80 hours of failed rescue efforts by men and machines from private and government agencies. Around 2:30 am Dr J Radhakrishnan, IAS, who was supervising the rescue operations declared Sujith dead. After the completion of post mortem, the mortal remains were laid to rest at around 8:30 am.
Later in the evening, Palaniswami visited the aggrieved household and offered his condolences to the family and announced a solatium of Rs 10 lakh on behalf of the state government and Rs 10 lakh on behalf of his party AIADMK.
Speaking to the media he said, “The government has undertaken maximum efforts to help the family, there were experts from NIT, ONGC, Anna University and also the private company L&T. We want to help the people when they are facing any difficulty and we need the cooperation of the public. Unused wells must be sealed with the necessary technical specifications.”
In a statement, the Chief Minister referred to the rules pertaining to the sinking of borewells and safety measures that were gazette in 2015. The CM stated that he had ordered the District collectors to ensure that the rules were adhered to, and in cases of negligence he urged officials to take strict action on those that were found responsible.
The borewell where Sujith was trapped and the pit dug by rescue teams were sealed permanently with concrete.
Sujith had fallen into an abandoned borewell near his home in Nadukattupatti village of Tamil Nadu’s Trichy District at around 5:30 pm Friday evening. The boy had been trapped in the borewell at a depth of around 88-feet, without food and water, but with oxygen supply.
While drilling of an 11-feet deep parallel pit (6-feet away from the borewell in which the boy was trapped) had been progressing since Sunday, the efforts were being hampered by the rocky terrain. Besides rigs, borewell drilling machines were also pressed into action. The borewell drilling equipment had dug 3 holes of 6 inches diameter unto a depth of 65-feet and a rig was being used to enlarge the pit, in order to enable rescue personnel to enter the pit and reach the boy after digging a horizontal tunnel.
Three ministers and several senior government officials had been present over the weekend at the site to supervise the rescue efforts that were being conducted by NDRF, SDRF personnel along with over 200 policemen and firemen.
However, rescue efforts were called off during the early hours of Tuesday after a foul stench emanated, suggesting that the child had died. “All the efforts to bring the child back alive had been done, but now in an unfortunate turn of events, a decomposed smell has started to come from the bore well in which the child had fallen.”
Tami Nadu Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami, Congress Leader Rahul Gandhi, DMK President MK Stalin and several other personalities from across fields condoled the death of Sujith.
DMK President MK Stalin visited the bereaved family, expressed his condolences and offered a solatium of Rs 10 lakh.
Stalin emphasized that the government could have done better and taken more measures to save the child. “It took over 80 hours to rescue the child, but the government could have done better had they not been careless. They could have saved him when he was at 36 feet and shouldn’t have let him slip to 88 feet. I doubt if the ministers and officials were as committed to the rescue as much as in giving interviews to the media”
He questioned the government on why the Army was not called, adding that he was not saying this to criticise the government.
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