Contaminated water killed 9 people, claim villagers in Karnataka's Kolar district

Bengaluru: Contaminated water has claimed the lives of nine people in Karnataka's Kolar district, alleged locals on Wednesday. While blaming water toxicity for the deaths of nine locals over the past couple of weeks, residents of Chamanahalli village went further to allege that they are being made to consume water mixed with sewage by the authorities.

Those who consumed the water experienced symptoms such as vomiting, diarrhoea and stomach issues. Going by the most recent inputs, a team of doctors has arrived at the village and is in the process of examining water samples along with the health of those who are experiencing symptoms allegedly due to the consumption of water drawn from local water sources. Neither the local administration nor government representatives have addressed these shocking claims. However, the lives of almost 1,500 families who live in the village continue to hang in the balance.

This incident comes at the heels of a major report by the Ministry of Consumer Affairs which revealed that tap water in 17 state capitals across the country is unfit for drinking purposes. The report was released by Union Consumer Affairs Minister Ram Vilas Paswan. The report also said that tap water supplied to residents of many places in Delhi, Chennai and Bengaluru is unfit for human consumption since it has failed on almost all quality parameters. Mumbai was the only city to have emerged with the reputation of supplying clean tap water to its citizens.

At the time of the release, Paswan had told media outlets that two phases of a study to ascertain the quality of tap water across the country have been concluded and two more phases are underway. The results of the third and fourth phase where samples of tap water drawn from all of India's district headquarters will be tested for bacteria and other elements.

In July of this year, a report asserted that polluted water killed seven people each day across India in 2018. A total of 36,000 people were diagnosed with water-borne diseases each day during that year, said the report. During that year, 2,439 people died as a result of the four major water-borne diseases, namely cholera, acute diarrhoeal diseases, typhoid and viral hepatitis.