Indian official drains the entire dam to retrieve the phone. A government official in India has been suspended after ordering the draining of a reservoir to rescue his phone.
After Rajesh Vishwas dropped the gadget while taking a selfie, it took three days to pump millions of gallons of water out of the dam.
Indian official drains the entire dam to retrieve the phone, however, the phone was too wet to work by the time it was discovered.
Mr. Vishwas claimed it held critical government material that needed to be recovered, but he has been accused of abusing his position.
On Sunday, the food inspector dropped his Samsung phone, which was worth approximately $1,200 (100,000 rupees), into Kherkatta Dam in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh.
He said he had verbal permission from an official to drain “some water into a nearby canal”, adding that the official said it “would in fact benefit the farmers who would have more water”.
The pump ran for several days, emptying out roughly two million litres (440,000 gallons) of water – reportedly enough to irrigate 6 sq km (600 hectares) of farmland.
His mission was stopped when another official, from the water resource department, arrived following a complaint.
“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.
Mr Vishwas has denied misusing his position, and said that the water he drained was from the overflow section of the dam and “not in usable condition”.
But his actions have drawn criticism from politicians, with the state’s opposition BJP party’s national vice-president tweeting: “When people are depending upon tankers for water facility in scorching summers, the officer has drained 41 lakh litres which could have been used for irrigation purpose for 1,500 acres of land.”
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