Even after multiple agencies tried to save the life of a 10-year-old boy for 16 hours, he died after being rescued from a 140-feet borewell in Madhya Pradesh’s Guna district. The boy, Sumit Meena, slipped into the open shaft of the borewell at around 5 pm on Saturday in Pipliya village under Raghogarh assembly segment, located 50 km from the Guna district headquarters. Officials said that he was unresponsive when he was brought out at around 9.30 am on Sunday.

The boy was rushed to a hospital in Raghogarh on life support system, Guna Superintendent of Police Sanjeev Sinha said. “Sorry to say, he is no more,” Guna district chief medical and health officer Dr Rajkumar Rishishwar told reporters at the hospital.

“The child was in the narrow borewell for the entire night in the chilly weather. His hands and feet were drenched and swollen. His clothes were also wet and mud was found in his mouth,” he said.

Doctors examined whether the body parts froze due to hypothermia (a condition that occurs when the core body temperature drops below 95 degrees Fahrenheit, he said.

Rescuers worked through the night and dug a parallel pit to reach the boy via a passage between the pit and borewell, Raghogarh Congress MLA Jaivardhan Singh said over phone from the spot earlier in the morning.

The boy was trapped at a depth of 39 feet in the borewell, which is around 140-feet deep, Guna Collector Satendra Singh said on Saturday. The borewell did not strike water, and hence no casing had been put on it, he said.

The NDRF team reached there from Bhopal late Saturday evening and helped in the operation. The family members of the boy panicked on Saturday evening when they did not see him for a long time.

A search was carried out and then they realised he had fallen into the borewell, a local person said.