Kasaragod: Birikulam, a village in Kasaragod's Kinanur-Karinthalam panchayat, had an edgy Wednesday night, when a 35-year-old man fell into a 65-feet-deep well.
After more than an hour, Fire and Rescue personnel from Kanhangad, 25 km away, pulled Sunil Kumar out, alive and unhurt. Residents are not just baffled by his unscathed escape but also because he fell into a well with a knee-high parapet around it, which was 10m away from his road.
According to residents, Kumar alighted from a passenger bus around 7 pm at Birikulam. "In 10 minutes, I got a call from Manu Marar saying he was hearing strange sounds from his well in the backyard of his house," said Anil Kumar, a pick-up driver at Birikulam.
"Immediately, Sunil's elder brother Sudeesh, who was with us, said it could be his brother," he said. They rushed to the well and confirmed it was Sunil and that he was safe. He managed to park himself on a ring of the well and called for help. The bottom of the well had a suranga – a narrow horizontal tunnel to extract water – which maintained the water level at about a man's height. "Otherwise, he would have drowned," he said.
The residents called the police and the Fire and Rescue personnel, who arrived with long ropes and rescue nets. In an hour, they pulled him out.
Sunil Kumar used to run a mobile accessory shop many years ago before he went to Japan looking for a job. "He returned looking at everything. Today, he leads an aloof life," said Anil.
