Jammu and Kashmir floods: Phones down, tracking the rescued difficult

NEW DELHI: Anirban Chattopadhyay (35) last spoke to a friend and his brother on Sunday evening. He told them the flood water in the Srinagar locality he was in had reached the switch board on the first floor.

He and six others sharing the house had moved to the second floor but were worried about the water rising even higher. With his mobile running out of battery and no electricity, Anirban, a consultant for a construction company, couldn't inform his family whether he had been evacuated.

"We haven't been able to reach him since Monday . After calling the Army helpline, getting in touch with the Bengal commissioner's liaison officer, we only know that people from their locality have been moved to the Badami Bagh cantonment camp. We don't know anything beyond that -whether the Army managed to evacuate them. I don't even know if Anirban was part of the group that was moved," said Ramanika Nandy, Anirban's friend. His friends are now desperately calling the Army helpline and government departments seeking help to track him.

Anirban is not new in J&K. A resident of Durgapur in Bengal, he has worked in Jammu for over two years and in Srinagar now for over a year. He specializes in finding resettlement alternatives for people displaced by large urban infrastructure projects.

"It is his job is to visit flood-prone areas.He knows many local people. But he never told me about flooding dangers in J&K. Anirban and six others had been living in Rajbagh, a low-lying area and close to the Jhelum. That's why they got so badly hit," Ramanika added.