A government official in India faced suspension following his decision to drain a reservoir in order to retrieve his phone. Rajesh Vishwas accidentally dropped his device while taking a selfie, leading to a three-day process of pumping millions of liters of water out of the dam.
Unfortunately, the phone was discovered to be too waterlogged to function properly. While Mr. Vishwas asserted that the phone contained sensitive government data and required recovery, he has been accused of misusing his position.
From BBC:
The food inspector dropped his Samsung phone, worth about $1,200 (100,000 rupees), into Kherkatta Dam, in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh, on Sunday.
After local divers failed to find it, he paid for a diesel pump to be brought in, Mr Vishwas said in a video statement quoted in Indian media.
He said he had verbal permission from an official to drain "some water into a nearby canal", adding that the official said it "would in fact benefit the farmers who would have more water".
The pump ran for several days, emptying out roughly two million litres (440,000 gallons) of water - reportedly enough to irrigate 6 sq km (600 hectares) of farmland.
His mission was stopped when another official, from the water resource department, arrived following a complaint.
"He has been suspended until an inquiry. Water is an essential resource and it cannot be wasted like this," Priyanka Shukla, a Kanker district official, told The National newspaper.
Mr Vishwas has denied misusing his position, and said that the water he drained was from the overflow section of the dam and "not in usable condition".
It is imperative that appropriate disciplinary action is taken against this individual for making an incredibly foolish decision.
It is simply incomprehensible why someone would choose to drain an entire reservoir for the sake of a phone, especially considering the logical expectation that the device would no longer function properly after being submerged in water for an extended period of time.
