A PIL has been filed in the Supreme Court of India, protesting the inaction of the government in preventing children from falling into open or abandoned bore wells and tube wells, in the wake of two-year-old Sujith Wilson's fatal fall into an abandoned bore well in Trichy, Tamil Nadu last Friday, reports legal news website barandbench.com.
Although continuous rescue operations commenced on Friday evening, the officials were unable to rescue the boy, who had stopped responding to vocal calls on Saturday morning. His decomposed remains were recovered in the early hours of Tuesday morning, reported the New Indian Express.
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The incident prompted advocate GS Mani to approach the Supreme Court citing the failure of the government at State and Central level to comply with the Court's 2010 guidelines to prevent bore well/tube well deaths. His plea also points out that such deaths have been reported across the country.
Placing reliance on newspaper reports, the petitioner highlighted that in 2012, Madhya Pradesh saw 67 children dying on account of falling into such bore wells and tube wells. Similar deaths have been seen in Maharashtra (39), Uttar Pradesh (19), Gujarat (18) and Tamil Nadu (13).
In June this year, a two-year-old boy died in Punjab after being stuck in a bore well for nearly 110 hours. A similar death of a six-year-old was also reported from Pune.
“This latest deplorable incident of Sujit in Tamil Nadu’s Trichy has again brought to the message of its dangers of uncovered bore wells and tube wells as many of small children fallen to deaths into such dangerous abandoned opened box well and tube well,” the petitioner contends.
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In 2010, the Supreme Court had issued the following, among other, precautionary directions when it came to the construction of bore wells and tube wells, i.e.
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The petitioner has also prayed that punishment be ordered against erring government officials for non-compliance with these precautionary measures.
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