Indian officials pump 2 million liters of water from lake to find phone

An Indian official has been suspended after ordering the pumping of millions of liters of water from a reservoir to find a phone lost while taking a selfie.

Rajesh Vishwas, 32, a food inspector in Kanker district of Chhattisgarh state, dropped his $1,200 phone into the 3-meter-deep Kherkatta reservoir on May 21 while on a picnic with friends. Vishwas said the phone contained sensitive government information and needed to be recovered.

After two days of divers failing to find the phone, Vishwas paid for a diesel pump to drain water from the lake, claiming he had obtained permission from local water officials to release water into a nearby canal for farmers to irrigate.

The pump ran for three days, drawing two million liters of water from the lake, enough to irrigate 600 hectares of farmland . The operation was stopped after an irrigation department official came to inspect it following a complaint. Vishwas eventually found the phone, but it was not working.

Indian officials order lake to be drained to retrieve phones

A pump drains water from the Kherkatta reservoir in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh on May 25. Video : Twitter/India Express

"He has been suspended pending investigation. Water is an essential resource and should not be wasted like this," Priyanka Shukla, a district official in Kanker, said on May 26.

Vishwas denied any misuse of his position, saying the lake water was only used by picnickers for bathing and not for irrigation or any other purpose. “The media has exaggerated the news,” he said.

The food inspector's actions were met with strong criticism from politicians. The BJP's national vice-president sarcastically said: "When people depend on tankers for water in the hot summer, this official has drained away two million liters of water that should have been used to irrigate 600 hectares of land."

Hong Hanh (According to BBC/Ground Report )

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