The Hardoi irrigation department officials averted a catastrophic flood-like situation on Friday by nabbing six miscreants trying to break the Sharda Canal embankment in the Lakhimpur Kheri district of Uttar Pradesh.
After Silchar, another similar act of damaging the River Wall by Jihadis was prevented just in time, this time in Hardoi, UP.
— Vikrant ~ विक्रांत (@vikrantkumar) July 16, 2022
The Center should send an alert to all state govt to start the vigilance of river banks, especially during the monsoon session. pic.twitter.com/DF0iWqQgVK
According to Akhilesh Gautam, the Executive Engineer of the Irrigation Department, Sub Engineer Satyendra Verma was on night patrol with his team when he saw the accused identified as Riksan Shah, Sikandar Shah, Wasim Khan, Sardar Ali, Zeeshan Ali and Muddrik Ali, trying to break the embankment. They were arrested and an FIR was filed against them in the Pasgawan police station.
According to reports, the six accused were breaking through the embankment between the Banikagaon village in Pasgawan block and the Hardoi water branch approximately 97 kilometres away from the Ucholia village in Lakhimpur Kheri.
The authorities said that the Hardoi water branch and Kheri water branch of the Sharda canal are running at full capacity right now. The canal had a discharge capacity of 2946 cusecs of water at the time of the incident. Hundreds of hectares of land in the densely populated villages of Ucholia, Bankagaon, Shivpuri, the Sitapur road and railway line would have been completely submerged if the miscreants had been successful in damaging the embankment. This would have led to a disastrous flood-like situation, said the officials.
It may be recalled that in the month of July, the Assam police arrested two miscreants Mithu Hussain Laskar and Kabul Khan in the state’s Cachar district in connection with the breaking of the Barak river embankment, which resulted in a catastrophic flood in Silchar.
On May 24, the Water Resources Department filed a police complaint against unknown miscreants for breaking through the embankment at Bethukandi, some 3 kilometres from the town centre, to allow rainwater from a marsh to pour into the Barak river.
Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma had in June stated that the flood was a man-made calamity and that those responsible will face harsh punishment. Sarma had then informed that six persons had been identified as the perpetrators of the embankment collapse that caused a deadly flood in Silchar town.
