‘Mahi’s death is loss of a lifetime’

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Our first child was a special gift from God. We had prayed for a baby girl and God fulfilled our desire. In today’s time, no one wants a daughter. Everyone wants sons and kills daughters when they are still in the womb. But we wanted our first child to be a girl, an avatar of Goddess Lakshmi.

Perhaps God wasn’t happy about my delight at seeing my Mahi grow. God took her away exactly four years after she was born. It was her fourth birthday; we were preparing for a little celebration and feast. Her fall into the 70-feet-deep borewell was a tragedy that my wife and I will never get over. She died of asphyxiation. I dread thinking about how my little girl must have felt while being suffocated to death.
I think it was in my destiny to have her in my life only for four years. There must be some bad karma because of which she left us. But would it be right to blame destiny and bad karma? Are the apathetic authorities not responsible for my innocent child’s death? Had the authorities acted on time, my Mahi would still be alive.
I informed the police within five minutes of her fall into the borewell. We could hear her crying for help for a few hours. She could not have been more than 10 feet into the pit at that time, we could figure out as her voice was very clear. The police arrived more than an hour after we called them, that too, empty-handed. Had they come on time with some kind of disaster management equipment, my daughter could have been saved.
However, because of the apathy of the policemen, who were quite rude to us, Mahi slipped deeper into the borewell and could not be pulled out in time.
When the Army arrived the next morning, it was too late, as we could no longer hear Mahi. The doctors’ team told us that she could have fainted. We still had hope. All we did was prayed for our daughter’s safety. The rescue operation went on for almost five days. My wife and I didn’t lose faith. We were very hopeful that our daughter would be taken out alive. However, we later learnt that she had died within hours of falling into the pit. She was initially stuck at a depth of around 10 feet, where she could breathe and shout for help. After a few hours, she slipped deeper and slowly lost access to oxygen.
Had the police acted on time, my daughter could have been definitely saved, and so could the many children who keep falling into borewells and lose their precious lives.
My wife and I will carry the pain of this loss for a lifetime. Our younger daughter Tanu, who will soon turn two, is our only support.
We are really disappointed with the administration and the authorities, who are not giving us any answers. We don’t even know if a prosecutor has been appointed for us in the case against those who have been arrested for killing my daughter due to their negligence. We get to know things through newspapers. I want to do something to prevent borewells from being carelessly left uncovered and becoming death traps for innocent children. It’s the government’s responsibility, but we can’t remain mute spectators to the lack of basic civic sense among the authorities.
Every day, I turn on a recording of my daughter’s dance performance on my cell phone and hear it repeatedly. That’s the only way to console myself. My grief will never end, but all I want now, apart from punishment for those responsible for carelessness regarding the borewell, is to prevent more children from falling into such death traps. How will I do it? I have no idea. I am a poor man with limited means, and the authorities have no ears for the poor.
As told to
Riddhima Malhotra