Preserve millions of liters of water in this critical period of drought or absolutely find your precious phone? This Indian official did not ask himself the question for very long and preferred to empty millions of liters of a water tank of the Kherkatta dam in central India to find his phone fallen into the water while he was taking a selfie. It has been suspended and an investigation is ongoing.
While vacationing with friends in the area, Rajesh Vishwas, a health inspector dropped his phone into the 4.60m deep body of water. Local residents dive to help him find the device worth about 950 euros. But which would contain sensitive data related to the administration. In vain.
Enough to irrigate 1,500 ha of agricultural land.
"Locals tried to find it but couldn't. They told me that they could surely find it if the water was shallower by two to three feet, "justifies the official to NDTV. The man would then have called one of these superiors who would have "verbal authorization" to drain.
Rajesh Vishwa then brought in two thirty-horsepower motor pumps that worked for three days emptying more than 2 million liters of water. Enough to irrigate 1,500 ha of agricultural land.
Chhattisgarh: Paralkot reservoir in Kanker district being emptied in peak summer to retrieve Rajesh Vishwas' Samsung phone. The whole process lasted for 3 days. He has only been suspended. #RajeshVishwas pic.twitter.com/zjBAevH537
— Annu Kaushik (@AnnuKaushik253) May 26, 2023
The pumps would have run from last Monday until Thursday. It was an official from the Department of Irrigation and Water Resources who stopped the operation after a complaint. The water had already dropped two meters.
The head of the water resources department confirmed to the media that he had agreed to drain the water up to 1.5 m but that when he arrived the level had dropped much more.
See alsoDrought: half of the world's lakes and reservoirs lose water
Rajesh Vishwas was suspended from office for abuse of power. "By abusing his position, he wasted thousands of litres of water during the intense heat season," said a regional official. In this region, as periods of suffocating heat approach, residents depend on tanker trucks for water.
As for the phone, recovered after three days in the water, it is unusable.
