The rescue team has finally recovered the corpse of Harish, the National Model School student who accidentally fell into the 80-foot well on Independence day. The body was recovered around 7:20 am today. The slushy deep well posed a serious challenge for two days for the rescuers.
Everybody from the Corporation Commissioner, City Mayor Rajkumar, Minister Nagaraj, Rescue team from the army and navy, City Police officials and several NGO workers were striving really hard to recover him.
Under water cameras were used to locate Harish inside the slushy waters. Even after a depth of 65 feet the body couldn't be located. And then late evening, the operations team decided to deploy a scuba diving team. But the existing team in Coimbatore didn't have the oxygen cylinders required to operate at that depth.
The navy team which was in the spot from late afternoon couldn't go in because of this and they sent out a request to the team in Tuticorin to help them. The team from Tuticorin started immediately from there and were expected to reach around 4am in the morning.
CRI pumps volunteered to send in high-suction motors that could pump out the water but that faced serious challenges as adequate power connections couldn't be found.
And then the NGOs sent in for generators that matched the power required for these motors and at around 10:45 pm the motors started pumping the water out from the well into the vacant bushy lands around the area.
Some canals and trenches were created ad hoc to hold the water too. This was done to help the scuba diving team to conduct the search easily. The scuba diving team from Tuticorin reached the spot by around 4 am and began assessing the place and started the search by 5 am.
After a 2 hour intensive search, the body of Harish was finally found stuck deep in the slushy waters and the divers roped him up to the shores. The parents were intimated of the recovery and the body has been taken to GH for post-mortem.
A special mention to Corporation Commissioner Mr. Vijay Karthikeyan, City Police Commissioner Mr. Amalraj, ADGP Sylendrababu for coordinating the scuba team, RAF Jayakumar, the Army and Navy team, Lieut Esan, Mr. Ravindran (RAAC), Syed (OSAI), Prasanna (Lead India 2020), CGS Manion (Siruthuli), Padmanabhan (No Food Waste) and the GV Residency residents association who were in the spot almost all the time providing the hands and hearts required in coordinating this rescue effort. The team used their contacts and coordinated a lot of help to reach the spot and were largely instrumental in making the rescue operation easier.
Hopefully this incident acts as a deterrent for young kids to not try these stunts in desolate places. This well was definitely unsuitable for any swimming activity as it was filled with so much dirt and slush. A young life has been lost because of this recklessness and it will always be irreconcilable to the parents.