Man arrested for breached Barak embankment that led to Silchar flooding

Hailakandi, July 2 (PTI): A man was arrested in Assam’s Cachar district for the breach of an embankment of the Barak River, which led to the devastating floods in Silchar town, police said on Saturday.

Kabul Khan, a resident of the Bethkundi area, was nabbed from his house on Friday night, they said.

Khan had allegedly filmed a video of the breach, which Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma had shown to the people when he had visited the embankment site on Friday.

Sarma had asked the people to identify the voices in the video, subsequently, Khan was identified.

He was detained for interrogation and later arrested, a senior police officer said.

Efforts are on to identify the others involved in the incident, he said.

The district administration maintains that the embankment was breached by miscreants, while locals claim that it was already damaged since the floods in May and they have been urging the authorities to repair it.

As repeated appeals to repair it fell on deaf ears, some people of the area dug the embankment so that the water that entered their houses could recede into the river, locals said.

However, as levels of the Barak River rose, water started entering through the breached embankment on June 19.

Terming the flood “man-made”, Sarma on Friday said that a case has been registered and the CID will investigate the matter.