Disabled Indian boy, 10, trapped in well with snakes and scorpions

Rahul Singh, who is deaf and mute, has been stuck in the 18-metre pit in Chhattisgarh for 80 hours

More than 500 emergency workers, along with hundreds of villagers, are desperately trying to rescue a 10-year-old boy trapped for the past 80 hours inside a borewell infested with scorpions and snakes in eastern India.

Rahul Singh, a deaf and mute boy, fell into the 18-metre defunct pit in the backyard of his home in the village of Piharid in the Janjgir-Champa district of Chhattisgarh on Friday.

His father, Lala Ram Sahu, started to dig a borewell a few days earlier for water but abandoned it when it did not yield any results.

He and his wife Geeta were at work when Rahul fell into the pit on Friday evening.

Emergency workers struggle to rescue a 10-year-old Indian boy from 80-ft deep borewell. Dahlia Nehme / The National

Authorities immediately launched a rescue operation, first considering pulling him out using ropes.

The federal National Disaster Response Force and army were then called to help.

For more than three days, more than 500 personnel from various rescue agencies have been digging a parallel pit to reach Rahul, who is stable and receiving food.

The teams were on Tuesday around two-and-a-half metres from Rahul but a rocky area has slowed down rescue efforts.

Authorities have reached out to robotics experts to help get the mission back on track and have arranged for anti-venom to be at hand, as the borewell is infested with snakes and scorpions.

“Rahul's condition is stable. He is responsive. Hard Rocks posing a great challenge in drilling/tunnelling,” NDRF tweeted on Tuesday.

Visuals shared by state chief minister Bhupesh Baghel on Twitter on Monday showed rescuers persuading Rahul to eat as they dropped food to him using ropes.

Mr Baghel said the operation was taking a long time due to the presence of rocks during drilling for the parallel tunnel.

Incidents of children falling into borewells are common in India, where there are an estimated 27 million wells.

Emergency workers struggle to rescue a 10-year-old Indian boy from 80-ft deep borewell. Dahlia Nehme / The National

A one-year-old girl was rescued after she was stuck four-and-a-half metres down a 30-metre borewell on a farm in neighbouring Madhya Pradesh in December.

As many as 40 children died in such accidents between 2009 and 2019, according to the National Disaster Response Force.