State of Chhattisgarh
Indian official drains entire dam to recover lost cell phone
When he wanted to take a selfie, the Indian officer’s phone fell into a reservoir more than four meters deep (icon image)
© ingimage / Imago Images
Food inspector Rajesh Vishwas ordered the water reservoir to be emptied after his mobile phone fell into the Kherkatta reservoir in India. He had millions of liters of water pumped out. Other politicians were outraged.
Food inspector Rajesh Vishwas lost his cell phone while on holiday in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh. The politician had gone to the Kherkatta Dam for a swim with some friends. As he was about to take a selfie, the Samsung phone slipped from his hand and fell into the overflow pool. After divers had searched the 4.5 meter deep lake for the device in vain, Vishwas decided on what was probably the most dramatic step that was possible in his situation: he had the entire dam drained.
“The locals tried to find it but failed. They told me they could certainly find it if the water was two to three feet shallower,” the newspaper quoted as saying.The National” the food inspector. He is said to have received verbal permission from an official to pump out the water. The official allowed him to “drain some water into a nearby canal” and told him that it would “actually benefit the farmers, who would then have more have water”.
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As the BBC reported that the politician paid for the subsequent installation of the two diesel pumps himself. The two devices ran for four days and pumped out a total of two million liters of water. When an official from the Water Resources Authority arrived, Vishwas was forced to call off his action. According to media reports, he still found his phone. However, the device has since broken down due to the water damage.
According to media reports, the politician claimed that there was sensitive government data on the device. He also justified himself by saying that the water came from the overflow section of the dam and was “not in usable condition”. Other politicians accused him of abusing his high-ranking position. The national vice-president of the opposition party BJP tweeted: “When people depend on tankers for water supply in scorching summers, the official has dumped thousands of liters that could have been used for irrigation.”
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Priyanka Shukla, a Kanker district official, told The National that there was no permit for the pumping. “If the water had been pumped out in the last three days, the department should have known,” she explains. Vishwas is suspended from duty pending an investigation. “Water is a vital resource and must not be wasted in this way,” she adds.
Sources:BBC“The National“