An X-ray shows the rod that went right through the man's skull
Sanjay Bahe, a 21-year-old construction worker in Madhya Pradesh's Balaghat district, had just dug a well and was trying to climb out using a rope. As he was slowly making his way up, the scaffolding gave away and he fell 35 feet into the well, onto the iron rods he had just laid moments ago.
One of these rods went right through his skull - it entered through his right temple and came out from the other side.
The freak accident took place last Wednesday.
Miraculously, Sanjay survived. He was immediately taken to a hospital in Maharashtra's Gondia, not far from the Balaghat district across the border. Later, he was moved to a specialty hospital in Nagpur.
Doctors said that the rod missed major blood vessels in the man's brain by a few millimetres.
Doctors say Sanjay had a "miraculous escape".
Sanjay had no major blood loss and the rod missed major blood vessels in his brain by a few millimetres, doctors said.
"The rod went all the way from the right temporal bone to the left frontal bone without damaging any major blood vessel," Dr Pramod Giri, neurosurgeon at the Neuron hospital in Nagpur told NDTV.
Sanjay was conscious when he was brought to the hospital but "was in hypotensive shock, so we corrected the shock and took the patient for surgery," Dr Giri said.
It took the team of doctors about one-and-half hours to extract the rod from his skull. He soon regained consciousness and is out of danger.
Sanjay will likely be discharged later this week, doctors said.