Prayer on every lip

It would be a miracle in every sense of the word if a minor trapped down a deep tube-well in a Dhaka railway colony is rescued alive. There is no precedent of anyone being pulled out alive from so deep a well – believed to be several hundred feet deep – as the 4-year-old boy is in. Zahid fell into the 14-inch wide pipe adjacent to a playground in Shahjahanpur Railway Colony on Friday afternoon. Such incidents had not prominently hogged the headlines in the past. Last year, a 9-year-old boy fell into a 200-foot borewell in India’s Rajasthan. Police and army could not rescue him even after 20 hours of efforts. Bangladesh Fire Service and Civil Defence official Maj Shakil Newaz, leading Aahid’s rescue, says they were trying to pull out the pipe when the report was filed at 11am on Saturday. Earlier, Zahid had responded to rescuers’ cry, the rscuers said. The monire boy has been supplied with oxygen and milk, the firefighters said. However, Zahid is becoming less responsive as time passes. The fireservice men have arranged for light inside the well and have sent a camera down there. Everyone in the country must have been praying for him since last evening but hopes for rescuing him alive is fading with passing of time, according to a news agency.