Villagers watch as chunks of the embankment disappear in the Fulhar in Bhaluka. Picture by Surajit Roy

Malda, July 8: A mob tried to push a block development officer into the raging Fulhar in Bhaluka last night when he was negotiating for the release of an engineer who had been confined by villagers for nearly 10 hours.

The engineer had come to supervise the anti-erosion work, which the villagers felt was an eyewash as strengthening of embankments should be done, not during, but before the rains.

As drown-the-BDO-before-we–are-drowned rent the air and some villagers physically lifted Narboo Tshering Lepcha off his feet to be thrown into the river, some others came to his rescue.

They snatched him from the clutches of the mob and smuggled him away to a house in the village from where he was whisked away by police.

In the past 72 hours, the Fulhar, a branch of the Mahananda, had eaten into 600 metres of the embankment in Bhaluka in Harischandrapur II block. Cracks have also appeared in other parts of the embankment that borders the village.

Yesterday morning, the villagers gheraoed the subdivisional officer and engineer of the embankment project, Salil Pal, when he went to oversee the anti-erosion work in Bhaluka, 50km from here. They kept him confined to a room from 11am to 9pm.

When Lepcha, the BDO of Harishchandrapur II, heard about the gherao, he set out for Bhaluka.

Lepcha’s arrival around 9.30pm made the villagers more angry.

“What was my fault? Some people raised a slogan that before they drowned they would drown the BDO in the river. However, some others helped me escape,” Lepcha said. Forces from the Harishchandrapur police station then rescued the BDO and the irrigation engineer. The BDO lodged a written complaint with the police this morning.

According to irrigation department sources, the Fulhar has been in spate for the past few days and the water has been passing barely a metre below the extreme danger level.

The ferocity of the river has started severely affecting the left embankment. Massive erosion has been reported from Shankartola near Manikchak, 36km from here.

“We have started introducing anti-erosion measures in these areas on an emergency basis,” a senior official of the Mahananda project said.

Executive engineer of the irrigation department Biren Das said the local panchayat samiti had already sanctioned Rs 5 lakh to meet the immediate crisis. Sandbags are being used along the embankment.

“We would soon start permanent anti-erosion work. Tenders have already been floated,” Das said.

Secretary of Bhaluka Bandh Raksha Committee Suresh Chowdhury said: “We had been warning the irrigation department for more than a year, urging for early and permanent anti-erosion measures. But they did not listen to us. Instead they started work just when the monsoon arrived. ”

Forward Bloc MLA from Harishchandrapur Tazmul Hussain said he had also briefed chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee on the grim situation when he had visited Malda last year. But that also did not work, he said.

District magistrate Sridhar Ghosh said Rs 40 lakh had already been sanctioned to protect the Bhalukha embankment. The irrigation department has been entrusted with the job.

“Throwing a BDO into the river will not solve any problem. Rather, the villagers should co-operate with the administration,” the district magistrate said.