Indian official drains entire reservoir to find dropped phone

A monstrous task

The task was monstrous taking workers three days to pump millions of liters of water out of the dam.

Vishwas claimed the smartphone contained sensitive government information that absolutely needed to be recovered.

This did not stop him from being suspended. Making matters worse was the fact that once the phone was found it was too unusable and his precious data could not be recovered.

To defend his actions, the official released a statement to local media, stating he had verbal permission from an official to drain “some water into a nearby canal” adding that it “would, in fact, benefit the farmers, who would have more water.”

The sentiment was not shared by his superiors. Priyanka Shukla, Kanker district official told the local newspaper The National: “He has been suspended until an inquiry. Water is an essential resource, and it cannot be wasted like this.”

Vishwas replied that the drained water was from an overflow section of the dam that was not “in usable condition” but reports from the SCMP revealed that it could have indeed irrigated 1,500 acres of land during a particularly hot and dry summer.