Four-year-old dangling from third-floor window rescued by off-duty firefighter

A four-year-old girl was rescued in dramatic fashion on Tuesday morning after she slipped through the protective window grill of her family’s third-floor apartment in India’s Maharashtra state.

The incident occurred in Pune city. The girl, Bhavika Chandane, was left sleeping alone in the apartment. She woke up and somehow slipped through the narrow bars of the window grill, becoming trapped and suspended above the street.

Social media videos showed the child clinging to the grill, her legs dangling in midair as she struggled to climb back up into the apartment.

She was eventually rescued by an off-duty firefighter, Yogesh Arjun Chavan, who happened to be home on his weekly day off.

Mr Chavan, a 14-year veteran of the Pune Fire Brigade, was preparing to take a shower when a neighbour, Umesh Sutar, began shouting for help.

“I went to my balcony and saw a girl hanging precariously from the window grill of the third-floor apartment. I knew that every second was critical,” Mr Chavan, who lives nearby, told The Indian Express.

Mr Chavan arrived at the apartment just as the child’s mother was returning home. Together, they were able to reach the bedroom and pull Bhavika safely back inside.

According to Mr Chavan, the girl’s mother had left a short while earlier to drop her older daughter at school.

“When the mother left home, Bhavika was asleep,” he said. “It seems she got up when she was home alone and inadvertently came out of the window grill while playing by the window.”

He said the girl was dangling from the window for at least 15 minutes before she was rescued. “As per my guess, she would have been hanging by the window grill for at least 15 minutes which also shows immense grit on the part of a four-year-old,” he said.