Government official in India drains dam to retrieve phone
Considering how valuable phones are, people always pull out all the stops in searching for them whenever they're lost. But would you go so far as to drain a dam just to retrieve your fallen phone? Apparently, this government official in India did.
According to reports from BBC and The Guardian, Rajesh Vishwas, a food inspector, is facing the consequences of his action after he ordered the Kherkatta dam in the state of Chhattisgarh to be drained of its millions of liters of water after he dropped his phone while taking a selfie.
Vishwas initially enlisted the help of local divers to retrieve the Samsung phone, worth about $1,200 (P67,000). According to him, it was imperative that the device be found as it contained sensitive government data.
When the divers failed to find it, Vishwas paid for two diesel pumps to be brought in and partly drain the reservoir. The pump ran for three days, taking out roughly two million liters of water that is reportedly enough to irrigate to 600 hectares of farmland.
In a statement to local media, Vishwas explained that he got permission from a sub-divisional officer to drain "some water" into a nearby canal, even stressing that it was actually a beneficial act.
"[The official] said it was not an issue if three to four-feet-deep water was drained, and would in fact benefit the farmers who would have more water," Vishwas said.
By the time that his phone was found, however, it was too water-logged to function anymore.
Following his action, Vishwas has now been suspended after another official from the water source department had gotten wind of the incident.
"He has been suspended until an inquiry. Water is an essential resource and it cannot be wasted like this," Priyanka Shukla, a Kanker district official, told The National newspaper.
Vishwas has meanwhile denied accusations that he misused his position to order the drainage, claiming that the water that was pumped out was surplus and "not in usable condition".