The fury of the Ganga continues to claim lives in flood-hit Bhutni Char, Malda, with yet another tragic death reported on Thursday evening. A one-and-a-half-year-old child, Sumit Mandal, drowned after falling into the water that had entered his family’s home in Uttar Nanditola village of Hiranandpur gram panchayat. With this, the Ganga has taken five lives in the region this season.
Sumit’s father, Vivek Mandal, a daily wage labourer, is currently in Delhi, while his wife Seema was left to manage their two children at home. As floodwaters rose inside their tin-roofed house, she had propped up the bed on bricks to keep her children above the waterline. Leaving them there, she went out for work, only to return an hour later to find her son floating lifeless. Despite being rushed to the nearby healthcare centre, Sumit was declared dead.
“I lost my son due to a small mistake on my part. Now I don’t know what to tell his father,” Seema said in tears.
This tragedy mirrors an incident in North 24 Parganas last August when five-month-old Rishika Ghorai drowned after slipping from her bed into accumulated rainwater.
Earlier this week, 21-year-old Roz Sheikh of Julabditola village, a paramedical student in Kolkata, drowned after being swept away by strong currents while cycling home through floodwater. On Wednesday, 11-year-old schoolgirl Hemangini Mandal of Malda’s Mahendratola village also lost her life after drowning while bathing in a dam breach caused by the Ganga’s swelling waters.
Political pressure mounted after Manikchak’s TMC MLA Sabitri Mitra publicly slammed the department and threatened to escalate the matter to the Chief Minister. In a sudden move, three top officials — Chief Engineer Gorachand Dutta, Executive Engineer Shibnath Gangopadhyay and Superintendent Engineer Pradeep Bhattacharya — were removed from their posts overnight. Subhankar Gudiya, from the Mahananda Embankment Division, has been given additional charge.
While the government has called the reshuffle a “routine transfer,” administrative circles remain abuzz with speculation, particularly about the transfer of Dutta, who had been in his post for just eight months. The removals came hours after the Calcutta High Court directed the state to submit a detailed report on Bhutni’s flood situation. A division bench of Justices Smita Das De and Sujoy Pal ordered the government to outline financial aid plans for victims’ families, rehabilitation measures, and explain why the newly built dam collapsed within a year. The report must be submitted within two weeks.
Meanwhile, residents of Malda and surrounding flood-hit areas received some relief as the Ganga and Phulhar rivers stabilized on Friday morning. At 8 am, the Ganga’s water level stood at 25.45 meters, about 15 cm above the danger mark, while the Phulhar measured 28.06 meters, 63 cm above the danger level. However, with heavy rainfall in North India pushing upflows into the Ganga, fears of another surge remain.
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