Army personnel take away Sonu’s body. (PTI)

Lucknow, Oct. 13: The battle to save two-year-old Sonu Singh, who fell 70ft down a borewell four days ago, ended this morning — but in tears.

Rescuers pulled out his body from the well, left open after a dispute between a contractor and water supply board engineers, and one look was enough for doctors to declare the toddler dead.

S.N. Prajapati, a doctor at the hospital in Agra town where army jawans had escorted the body from Lehrakapura village about 30km away, said the little boy had been dead for two days.

“I have two daughters. Sonu was the youngest and the only male child in my family. The callousness of the local administration killed my son,” father Karan Singh sobbed as Sonu’s body was fished out of the hole the boy had fallen into on October 9.

Angry villagers later staged a sit-in in front of the Jal Nigam office in Agra district. Riot control units are on standby in case there is a backlash from residents.

In March, authorities had rescued a two-year-old girl, Vandana, who fell into a 45-foot-deep borewell in Tehra village, Agra.

Uttar Pradesh water supply board managing director A.K. Srivastava today issued a formal instruction to engineers to ensure that all abandoned wells in the state are refilled immediately.

“The tragedy happened because the engineers and the contractors had to leave in a hurry following protests by some villagers over the site of the well,” Srivastava said.

Some engineers, however, said temporary covers on open holes were often stolen by villagers.

Superintending engineer Sushil Kumar, who has ordered a probe, said preliminary investigations confirmed the allegation that the mouth of the well had been left open.

He said two engineers — S.K. Bansal and S.K. Yadav — had been suspended and the contractor, P.C. Rai, arrested. “We will ask the police to register a murder case against the contractor,” Kumar said.

Sonu had tumbled into the 150-foot-deep well while playing with friends. Reports said he remained stuck at a depth of around 70ft.

A massive rescue operation — involving police and army officers — was launched but frequent mudslides inside the well hampered the efforts to save the boy.

This morning, a tunnel was dug to reach the boy but it was too late. “It took inordinately long to complete the digging of the parallel tunnel,” said Agra police chief Raghuvar Lall.

In December 2006, another little boy, who fell 125ft down a borewell near Bhopal, died minutes after being pulled out. Sources said the weight of the huge crowd of onlookers caused part of the soil to cave in and block the hole, suffocating five-year-old Vijay Pal.

But Haryana boy Prince was lucky.

Five months before Vijay died, Prince, then a six-year-old, spent 50 hours in a 60-foot-deep borewell in Kurukshetra before being pulled out.