About two years ago, the boy was taken to a doctor after he swallowed a whistle he was playing with. But the doctor sent him away, saying it would be passed out of the body the next day. Ten days ago the boy experienced suffocation while taking bath in a well with his friends. His friends took him to an ENT specialist, who found something stuck in his throat. The doctor referred him to the hospital. Balaji was brought to the general hospital with infection of throat and Dr K Balakumar, Professor of ENT, confirmed the presence of a foreign body in the boy's windpipe. After a two-minute endoscopic procedure at the hospital on Tuesday, doctors under a short-term anaesthesia used a forceps to remove the whistle from the boy's throat, the sources said.