Blast on barrage on Neera river, cops suspect sand mafia

The barrage in Kamaleshwar village on the Pune-Satara border, which is a Kolhapur Type (KT) Weir, a common type of small dam used to create reservoirs for irrigation, is built on Neera river which marks the border of Pune and Satara district between the Baramati and Phaltan talukas respectively.

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Police inspector Annasaheb Gholap of the Phaltan rural police station said, “A very loud sound of an explosion was heard around 2 am in the adjacent villages in the areas around the spot. A security guard deployed by the irrigation department reached the spot and saw that a part of the barrage was destroyed.” “We suspect people involved illegal extraction of sand from the riverbed behind the blast. They seem to have done this to bring down the level of water so that sand can be extracted easily. We have registered an offence against unidentified suspects under sections of Explosives Act, Damage to Public Property Act and Indian Penal Code section 430 (Mischief by injury to works of irrigation or by wrongfully diverting water).”

A villager from Kamleshwar village said, “Sand mining is rampant in Baramati, Indapur and Daund and sand worth hundreds of crores of rupees has been extracted from riverbeds to fulfil the demand from urban areas. Police and irrigation department officials are hand-in-glove with the sand mafia. Even 10 days ago, these people had tried to destroy the same barrage but police did not register a case.”
Yogesh Sawant, an assistant engineer with the Irrigation Department who has filed a complaint in this case, said, “At least 50 per cent of the water that was stored in the reservoir has been lost and it will take some days to replenish that must of volume. We have started repairing the damaged part.”

Explaining the modus operandi of the sand mafia in the area, a retired revenue department employee who is from Phaltan said, “These gangs are active in both Pune and Satara district, especially in the Neera riverbed. The licenses for sand excavation from the Pune side have been given, but those on Satara side have not been auctioned. Though the licenses are for limited areas, they extract sand from everywhere using trucks and motor boats.”

Four years ago, he said, when addition collector Yashwant Sonavane of Malegaon was burnt alive by the oil mafia, the district administration took action against these people, but now they are rampantly excavating riverbeds and depleting the natural resource.