An 11-year-old boy, who was trapped in a gap between the approach road and the pillar of a bridge on Bihar’s Sone river for around two days, was rescued by the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), but was declared dead after a few hours.

Ranjan Kumar had been rescued in an unconscious state and rushed to Sasaram Sadar Hospital where doctors examined and declared him dead. One of the doctors said that the boy seemed to have died a couple of hours earlier.

Ranjan spoke a few words to his father on Thursday morning before falling silent, spreading concern among the rescuers, relatives and hundreds of local people, who had assembled at the spot in scorching heat with prayers seeking his well-being.

Ranjan had gone missing from Khiria village on Tuesday and his family had been looking around for him. It is not yet clear how the boy fell into the gap. A local woman who stood in the shade of the bridge to escape the harsh sun on Wednesday afternoon heard the child crying and alerted others.

“We got information about my son around 3pm on Wednesday and rushed to the place. We tried to rescue him with the help of the people of our village. When we did not succeed, we went to the Nasriganj police station to seek help,” Ranjan’s mother Reshma Devi said.

The local administration started rescue operations on Wednesday evening without much success because the child was trapped around 10 feet below the surface.

The officials scrambled oxygen cylinders and started supplying oxygen in the crack with the help of a pipe. A State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) team also reached the site on Wednesday night. However, all the efforts to extricate him proved futile.

The NDRF was called in on Thursday morning and a 30-member team from its 9th battalion, stationed at Bihta in Patna district, rushed to the spot with specialised equipment to deal with the situation.

“It was a very challenging situation. The gap in which the child had fallen tapered downwards. The child was lying sideways in a horizontal position, compressed in a space that was just around seven inches wide. The previous rescue efforts had pushed him further down in the gap,” NDRF 9th battalion commandant Suneel Kumar Singh told The Telegraph.

The NDRF personnel cut a hole in the concrete pillar of the bridge to reach Ranjan, but the move did not bear any fruit.

“Cutting the pillar more could have led to structural damage to the bridge, so we decided to take the help of the engineers of Bihar Rajya Pul Nirman Nigam (state bridge construction corporation) present on the spot to tear away the approach road of the bridge to reach the kid. Heavy earthmovers were used and he was rescued around 5.15pm,” Singh said.