Kurukshetra's Prince was amazingly lucky to have come out alive of a 60-foot deep pit, after 50 grueling hours, but statistics show that not many others get a second lease of life.

Two-year-old Ajay died and had to be buried in an abandoned bore-well into which he fell on November 23, 2003.

''It was 220 ft deep dead well, and the pipe had not been removed. The boy fell into the 8-inch diameter pipe, while playing. His body got stuck at a point, about 180 ft deep. Even after a 40-hour long operation, we could not rescue him,'' Additional Chief Fire Officer, Ahmedabad [Images] M F Dastur said.

Teams from Mumbai had come to the Khadi village near Sidhpur in Patan district for the rescue operation. ''Unlike, Prince who had space to sit, the boy was stuck at a point inside the narrow pipe, with his hand over his head. He had sustained injuries as he fell and his body had swollen. Conditions were much difficult for him, with water dipping on him from the pipe. We could not feed him too. He was alive for sometime, but gave up,'' Dastur, who was part of the rescue operations, told UNI.

He said another advantage that the rescuers had in Prince's case was that there was a well close to the pit into which the boy had fallen. ''So they had to dig a few feet more into the earth. But for Ajay, it would have been a 180-foot affair. We tried all our best, but in vain.''

Bore-well inspection cameras were fitted to monitor his well being, and the operations went on for 40 hours, and in the end the authorities had to give up. As the body could not be retrieved, it was decided to bury it there itself, he said.

Another unfortunate case was that of 16-year-old Ranjit, who drowned after he fell into a 150-foot deep bore-well in Gotri village near Vadodara. His body was later pulled out, he said.

But there have been few lucky ones too. A teenaged girl who fell into a 60-ft deep pit in Mobal village, was pulled out by villagers and fire brigade personnel, using a rope.

She managed to hang on to the rope by herself, said fire brigade sources in Vadodara.

More recently, a two-year-old child was rescued on June 1, in Odhav area of the city from a not-so deep well. ''The pit was barely 12 to 13 ft deep and the operation lasted just 15 to 20 minutes. The boy was not injured,'' he said.