Assam floods: Death toll rises to 173 after 14 more fatalities; Man arrested for Silchar embankment breach

New Delhi: The flood situation in Assam continues to remain grim. With 14 new fatalities in the last 24 hours, the total death toll in the disaster has risen to 173.

As many as 29.7 lakh people have been affected across 30 districts, the Assam State Disaster Management Authority said.

Several major rivers in the state including the Brahmaputra continue to flow above the danger mark.

Meanwhile, a visiting Inter-Ministerial Central Team (IMCT) went to some of the flood-hit districts to assess the damage, according to an official release.

The team members in two groups visited seven districts and discussed the situation with the respective district administration.

Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma distributed ex-gratia of Rs four lakh each to the next of kin of 10 of the 24 people who died due to the flood in Cachar district.

The process of granting relief to family members of the other deceased will be taken up in a phased manner.

Man arrested for Silchar river embankment breach

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 19 June.

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

With inputs from PTI

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