On 3rd April (Wednesday), the dead bodies of at least 30 monkeys were found in a water tank next to Vijaya Vihar, which is located in Nandikonda municipality’s Ward No. 1 in Telangana. The monkeys apparently attempted to drink water because the tank lid was open and drowned because they couldn’t come out. The water tank is an old building with a partially exposed tin roof. People living in the area notified the authorities after experiencing unpleasant stench from the tank.
The ward’s residents reportedly have been drinking the same polluted water supply for the previous few days. On Wednesday, April 3, locals discovered that the water tank’s lid had been taken off. They then peeked inside, after which they witnessed the dead animals floating in the water. Afterwards, they filed a complaint with the municipal administration.
According to officials, the monkeys died inside the water tank after struggling to escape through the open lid. About 200 households in Hill Colony were receiving drinking water from the tank, which had metal sheets placed on top by municipal workers. The authorities mentioned that monkeys may have attempted to enter the water tank through the metal sheets in order to escape the intense heat, but they ended up drowning.
In a blatant display of gross negligence, the municipal water supply workers failed to clean the water tank, which requires sanitising at least once every two weeks. As a result, individuals were drinking contaminated water. Now, the bodies have been taken out by municipal employees and the tank has been cleaned.
The locals were concerned about the effect on their health because of the tainted water. They suspected that the monkeys died there around ten days earlier, and the people have been consuming the same water since then. They demanded that municipal officials be held accountable for their incompetence.
Nageshwar Rao, the superintendent engineer for the Nagarjuna Sagar Project, said that the water supply from the tank was cut off for three days and investigators discovered the carcasses while investigating. The tank, he added, only supplied fifty families with potable water. Meanwhile, households that previously obtained their water from the tank will now get it from other sources.
Nalgonda district collector Hari Chandana released an official statement which read, “There are two drinking water tanks with a capacity of 2,000 litres each and one with a capacity of 1,000 litres in Nandikonda Hill Colony. Additionally, there is another tank into which the monkeys fell and died. However, there has been no drinking water supply from this tank for the last three days. After investigating the cause, it was discovered that the monkeys had fallen into the tank and died. Municipal authorities promptly removed the deceased monkeys and cleaned the tank.”
— Collector Nalgonda (@Collector_NLG) April 3, 2024
She further said, “It has been clarified that only 50 households received drinking water from this tank, and there was no supply from it for the past three days. The water tanks supplying drinking water to the main households in Hill Colony are not related to the incident. Residents need not worry. The tank where the monkeys fell and died has been cleaned, and drinking water will be released after the tank is fully chlorinated. Until then, water would be supplied to households receiving water from this tank through an alternative route.”
