At least 16 people, including a six-month-old baby, have died and hundreds have been hospitalised in India's "cleanest city" due to a diarrhoea outbreak caused by contaminated water.
Since late December, more than 1,400 people have reported symptoms of diarrhoea in the Bhagirathpura area of the central city of Indore after drinking contaminated water.
Mayor Pushyamitra Bhargava on Friday confirmed 10 deaths due to the diarrhoea outbreak. However, local media on Monday put the number at 16.
The state health department has confirmed only six deaths so far.
At least 142 people remain hospitalised, 11 of them in a critical condition, according to health officials.
Tests conducted by a medical college in the city revealed that water samples collected from the densely populated area, home to around 15,000 people, were contaminated by bacteria due to a leak in the main pipeline.
Officials said the leak was detected near a police outpost in Bhagirathpura where a toilet had been built directly over the line.
Community health expert Amulya Nidhi told NDTV the situation in Bhagirathpura went beyond physical illness and entered psychological and systemic collapse.
"This cannot be treated as a simple diarrhoeal outbreak anymore. We are seeing systemic effects, neurological, immunological and mental. This suggests the contamination was far more severe," he said.
His statement came after a 67-year-old woman showed symptoms of the rare disorder Guillain-Barré Syndrome, raising fears of the water contamination potentially causing irreversible neurological damage.
Indore's chief medical officer, Madhav Prasad Hasani, told Reuters he couldn’t comment on the death toll, but over 200 people from the same locality were undergoing treatment in different hospitals. “The final report of the water sample collected from the affected area is awaited," he said.
Sanjay Yadav, a resident, said his 69-year-old mother started vomiting on the evening of 26 December. She was taken to hospital but “died in less than 24 hours”, he told the BBC.
Shravan Verma, the district administrative officer, said authorities had deployed teams of doctors for door-to-door screening and were distributing chlorine tablets to help purify water.
"We have found one leakage point that could have contaminated the water and that point has been fixed," Mr Verma said.
Residents said the tap water in their homes remained contaminated and foul-smelling. The municipal corporation was currently supplying water to Bhagirathpura through tankers and locals had been urged not to use tap water until further notice.
The Madhya Pradesh High Court on Friday ordered the municipal corporation to supply additional water tankers and urged authorities to “uphold the beauty of Indore”.
Indore has been recognised by the federal government as the “cleanest city in the country” for eight years running, based on surveys conducted as part of a public cleanliness initiative.
“This is big news. If people are dying because of the water, then this is wrong,” Justice Dwarkadhish Bansal said. “Keep upholding the beauty of Indore.”
“I want you to send additional water tankers and send photographs to the lawyer,” he added. “We should send the tankers within 10 minutes."
Water conservationist Rajendra Singh blamed deep-rooted corruption for the deaths due to water contamination and called the tragedy a "system-created disaster”.
"If such a tragedy can occur in the country's cleanest city, it shows how serious the condition of drinking water supply systems must be in other cities," he told the PTI news agency.
“Indore's contaminated drinking water crisis is a system-created disaster. To save money, contractors lay drinking water pipelines in close proximity to drainage lines.”
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