World

Rogue Official Fined After Draining Dam to Retrieve His Phone

PULL THE PLUG

He was trying to take a selfie when he dropped the device.

Kherkatta Reservoir.
Renuka Sarkar/Reuters

An Indian official has been suspended from his duties and slapped with a fine after draining a dam in an effort to retrieve his phone. Rajesh Vishwas was accused of not seeking permission to waste over 880,000 gallons of water to find his device which he dropped while taking a selfie. He claimed that he had taken his extreme course of action because his Samsung device contained sensitive government data, according to the BBC. The food inspector first turned to local divers to fish the phone out of the waters of the Kherkatta Dam in India’s central Chhattisgarh state last week. When they were unable to find the device, Vishwas ran a diesel pump for several days to drain the dam. His phone was eventually found, but unsurprisingly didn’t work after being completely waterlogged.

Read it at BBC