Karauli (Rajasthan): Polluted water supply through government pipelines has claimed the life of a 12-year-old boy and an elderly man, while 124 others are seriously ill since Monday in Rajasthan’s Karauli district. The boy died on Tuesday morning while the elderly man died on Wednesday.
Following the incident, Public Health Engineering Department (PHED), Mahesh Joshi has called for a factual report from the officials leading them to Hindaun city on Wednesday. "People living in the localities of Chaube Pada, Vyaniya Pada, Kajipada, Shahganj, Thakar Potha, and Purnai Kachahari wards fell ill after drinking polluted water supplied through mixed pipelines, pipelines belonging to the government as well as the illegal pipelines passing through sewerage," said Dr. Mahesh Joshi, the PHED Minister.
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Karauli, DM, Ankit Singh said that the "Chief engineer and Additional-chief engineer have reached the spot and are looking for illegal connections and disconnecting them. I would like to appeal to residents of the affected area, please do use the water which you had stored earlier. We are sending a fresh supply of water through PHED tankers as we had stopped the water supply for the last three days. We are trying to figure out the reason and spot which led to the contamination of water."
"Our medical team has surveyed over 750 homes in the area to find out if more people have such symptoms and also provided preventive medicines. As per the latest update out of 124 patients 63 have been discharged while 44 are under treatment and the majority of them are stable."
PHED engineers of Hindaun city have inspected the affected areas and collected water samples from Shahganj water tank and at least 10 different houses and a report on the same is awaited. The family members of the deceased have refused to conduct post-mortem.
