Indore Water Deaths Are a Crime, Not an Administrative Slip
People in Indore were poisoned by their own government. Sewage entered the drinking water supply, complaints were ignored, the flow was not stopped, and citizens kept consuming contaminated water until bodies began piling up in hospitals. This was not misfortune. This was the state failing at its most basic duty and then attempting to talk its way out of culpability.
What followed the deaths was not remorse or accountability, but denial. The remarks made by Kailash Vijayvargiya, suggesting exaggeration and politicisation, were obscene in both timing and substance. When people die after drinking municipal water, there is no room for narrative management. Minimising deaths is not governance. It is an attempt to bury responsibility before it reaches the courtroom.
Let us be clear. This was not an unforeseeable accident. Residents complained of foul-smelling and discoloured water. Illness spread visibly. Engineers and municipal officers responsible for water supply had a legal, professional, and moral obligation to immediately shut down distribution, conduct emergency testing, and alert the public. They failed on all counts. Water kept flowing. Warnings were not issued. Deaths followed.
Calling this an “administrative lapse” is an insult to the dead. Under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, causing death by negligence is a criminal offence. Supplying bacterially contaminated water after complaints is not mere oversight, it is reckless disregard for human life. Engineers, zonal officers, supervisors, and senior municipal authorities were custodians of public safety. Their negligence was gross. Their accountability must be criminal.
Suspensions announced so far are a farce. Suspension is not punishment. It is a paid pause. It protects pensions, preserves careers, and quietly prepares the ground for reinstatement once public anger fades. If a private factory owner poisoned a neighbourhood’s water supply, police would not issue suspension orders. FIRs would be registered. Arrests would follow. The law cannot change simply because the accused wear government badges.
Ministerial trivialisation compounds the crime. When a senior leader downplays deaths, it sends a clear signal to the police and bureaucracy that this is an optics exercise, not a criminal matter. It weakens investigations before they begin. It tells negligent officers that political cover will arrive faster than handcuffs. That is how impunity is institutionalised.
Indore’s much-advertised “clean city” image stands exposed as hollow branding. Clean streets mean nothing when taps deliver sewage. Governance is not about awards or rankings. It is about what happens when systems fail and lives are lost. On that test, the response so far has been disgraceful.
What must happen now is non-negotiable. FIRs must be registered under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita for causing death by negligence and reckless handling of harmful substances. Investigations must be independent of the municipal and political machinery involved. The full chain of command must be examined, not just junior engineers sacrificed to protect seniors. And ministers who trivialised deaths must be called out for undermining justice, not rewarded with silence.
These deaths are not a communications problem. They are a criminal failure of the state. Until prosecutions begin, every suspension order, inquiry committee, and defensive statement is nothing more than proof that human life is still cheaper than political embarrassment.
