Relatives crowd around the borewell near Agra on Wednesday. (PTI)

Lucknow, March 26: Two-and-a-half-year-old Vandana was pulled out of a 180-foot borewell a day after she fell into it while playing with friends in a village near Agra.

The army and the administration launched a rescue effort within hours of the child falling into the pit in Tehra village, 40km from Agra, last evening. She was trapped at a depth of 45 feet.

Called in around 11.30pm, the army first dropped several oxygen tubes into the well. The girl was heard crying and calling out for her mother, which gave rescue workers and villagers hope.

All day, her father shouted “Vandana ho” into the face of the well to keep her calm. In between her cries for help, the child asked for food. Juice, tea and biscuits were dropped into the well.

The army dug a parallel borewell and made a five-foot tunnel connecting it to the pit where the girl was trapped. “I think it is just a matter of time before the child can be pulled out to safety,” said Agra commissioner S. Meena, before she was rescued around 9.30pm.

The accident has again brought to the fore the dangers posed by borewells, which have turned into death traps for children.

In 2006, a massive operation was launched to rescue five-year-old Prince, a Haryana boy, who too had fallen into a borewell. He was saved, but a three-year-old in Rajasthan died in May last year after falling into a pit.

The well into which Vandana fell while playing with friends was dug a month ago by a government contractor and then abandoned as water was not available.

“With summer approaching, we wanted more water sources. We asked the administration to dig a new well as the old ones were not working. The well was dug but there was no water. The contractor stopped work about a month ago and never returned,” said Satish Verma of Tehra village.

Jal Nigam, a department under the state irrigation and water supply ministry, has been given the job of digging fresh tubewells.

“An estimated 20 to 30 per cent of the existing tubewells run dry every year. We need to dig fresh wells. The pipes from the old ones are taken out, but these wells are never filled up with soil as they should be,” said Viswakarma Srivastava, a senior officer of the irrigation department in Agra.

Jal Nigam officials admit a large number of wells are abandoned. “We don’t blame the contractors. They usually cover these wells with asbestos sheets so they can refill the pits with soil when they get labourers. But these are stolen,” an officer said.

The administration, however, sought to turn the heat on the contractor. “We are trying to track down the contractor. Appropriate action will be taken soon,” said Agra district magistrate Mukesh Meshram.