Telangana village mourns stranger washed away in flood, donates money to his family

For two days, the village of Baswapur in the Koheda mandal of Siddipet district was in mourning. The villagers grieved the loss of M Shankar, a man they had known for just a few hours. They did not know anything about him, except that he was someone who fought hard for survival. These few hours were enough for the villagers to mourn for Shankar and blame themselves partially for his death – because, despite their best efforts, they couldn’t save the man who was stranded in the middle of a stream, and got washed away in the flood. Nearly two weeks ago, on August 15, Shankar, a resident of Kasipet village in Mancherial district, was washed away in a water stream in Baswapur. A lorry driver by profession, he was crossing the Baswapur bridge in the early hours of the day but the lorry could not stand the pressure of the water flowing on the bridge and fell into the water stream. He held on to a tree in the midst of the water stream, which was overflowing with flood waters due to incessant rains in Telangana. All the rescue teams – fire department, NDRF and police – were pressed into service to rescue him. The villagers who got to know about the incident around 7 am, made several attempts to rescue him by throwing a rope. “We attempted to rescue him by walking on the side of the stream and throwing a rope, but that was not possible because of the thorny bushes and trees. Although it was extremely risky, we even formed a human chain and walked on the overflowing bridge. We tried to throw a life jacket to him,” Mujahid Pasha, a resident of Baswapur who was crucial in collecting the funds, narrated. “He was extremely weak. Even though we were in the water for just an hour, we were shivering too. The water level also kept increasing. Two attempts to make the life jacket reach Shankar failed. In the final attempt, he grabbed the jacket but could not hold on it,” Pasha added. Shankar was washed away in the water around 11.30 am. “We cannot get over that image of him being washed away. Many wailed loudly and just could not contain their emotions. The incident was too traumatic. We regret that despite so many people joining forces to rescue the man, we failed him,” Pasha expressed. The tragedy occurred just a couple of minutes before the rescue helicopter reached to save Shankar. Finance Minister and MLA of Siddipet Harish Rao had arranged a chopper for the rescue. “If the chopper had arrived just 10 minutes earlier, probably Shankar would have been alive. We thought of many possibilities of how the death could have been prevented. We cannot handle the thought that a man was washed away in front of our eyes,” Pasha expressed. Carrying the guilt of not being able to save Shankar, the village of Baswapur with a population of 4,000-5,000 people collected Rs 1.15 lakh within a week, and handed it over to his family, earning praise across the district for their kind and humane gesture. On Saturday, Shankar’s body was found in a decomposed state. When the family came to collect the body, the villagers handed over a cheque of Rs 1.10 lakh to Shankar's wife Vijaya. “We thought about Shankar’s family. Only later we saw his photos. Then it occurred to us that we should do something for his family, so we gave them the money,” Pasha said. An additional Rs 5,000 too was collected, which they plan to directly deposit into Vijaya’s bank account.