"I survived because I always believed they would rescue me," said a frail looking Nikhil, 18, lying at the Intensive Care Unit of the Combined Military Hospital (CMH) yesterday. Nikhil, who hails from Patuakhali, was miraculously pulled out of the debris of multistorey Phoenix building alive at 11:20pm on Wednesday.

Nikhil was trapped on the ground floor in a pocket of the collapsed building for 108 hours with his badly injured left hand stuck between two steel frames.

Within two hours of his rescue doctors at the CMH had to amputate his hand from the elbow.

For the rescuers it was a joy they took home on the very last day of the 119-hour-long relentless rescue operation involving hundreds of men and machines from nine different organisations.

Rescuers from the engineering battalion of the army said they were already aware of Nikhil being there when his brother-cum and co-worker told them about his position. After they made holes in the concrete slabs they looked down through the opening and

suddenly Nikhil faintly spoke out, "Sir, I can see you."

The three rescuers from the army and the fire brigade reached him through a two feet high opening, manually removing piles of debris. They used a hydraulic steel cutter to free his hand from the steel frames. A stretcher had to be sent down to bring him out.

Brigadier Nizam Ahmed, heading the rescue operation, said the first thing Nikhil said

Nikhil

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after he was pulled out was "give me some water" and I offered him some saline water. "Then I rushed him to the CMH," said Ahmed.

At the hospital yesterday Nikhil said sometimes he thought he was dying of exhaustion. "Sometimes I was thirsty and sometimes I fell asleep. I could smell the stench from my rotting hand, but I kept praying," he told The Daily Star lying on his hospital bed.

Youngest of two brothers and a sister, Nikhil came to Dhaka from Mirzaganj, Patuakhali with his family seven months ago and rented a small room at the Mahakhali Shattala Hindupara for Tk 950 a month. His father Suranjan, his elder brother Rinku and himself had been working on the Phoenix building for seven days as day labourers receiving Tk 120 a day. On the fateful day, Nikhil and Rinku were working together to demolish the walls on the ground floor. Their father was at the entrance of the building when the structure on 35,000 square feet of floor area tumbled down. Rinku fell on the right side of a wall while Nikhil's hand got stuck. Their father Suranjan was hurt in the leg but managed to crawl out of the debris.

According to Rinku, he crawled back to Nikhil and tried to free his hand. Unable to nudge the solid frames, Nikhil insisted that Rinku saved his own life. "After I struggled out of the debris, I told everyone about my brother and cried but they admitted me to the hospital from where I escaped to return to the site. I kept vigil until he was rescued," Rinku said.

Suranjan and his wife Renu Bala, a garment worker yesterday told The Daily Star at their single room accommodation that they had migrated to Dhaka for a better living.

"We are poor people, we cannot afford the cost of treatment, neither can we support our dear son Nikhil who is now physically challenged," Renu Bala said.

"But I thank Bhagaban for saving the life of our son Nikhil," she added.