Over the course of three days, approximately two million liters of water were pumped from the reservoir into the nearby canal.
In India, a government official has been sidelined after ordering an artificial reservoir to be drained to find his mobile phone.
They write about it, among other things BBC and India Today.
The man had dropped his Samsung smartphone, worth almost 1,200 euros, into the pond on Sunday while taking a selfie. The incident happened in Chhattisgarh state in central India.
Local divers tried to find the cell phone in the pool without success. So the official decided to take the reins into his own hands. He set up a diesel pump and started a pumping operation that lasted three days. During that time, about two million liters of water were pumped from the reservoir into the nearby canal. The water could have irrigated 600 hectares of farmland.
According to the man’s own words, he had received verbal permission from the local official to pump the water and that in fact the person giving the permission had said that the activity would benefit the farmers of the area.
The pumping operation was interrupted when the authority responsible for water resources in the area arrived. The man who ordered the pumping has been arrested while the investigation is underway.
According to the man, the smartphone contained sensitive local government information, which is why he had to get it back. Finally, the cell phone was found in the reservoir, but it no longer worked.
The northern and central parts of India are currently experiencing a heat wave and there is a daily shortage of irrigation water.