Have you ever walked across hanging bridges or floors with gaps while holding your belongings and mobile phone tight, fearing that it might slip through the crevices and you lose your stuff forever? Or you might have held onto your phone with extra care while trying to capture rain footage for reels, half-hanging from your window. One government official from India ended up losing his phone due to a moment of carelessness and what he did to retrieve the phone, ended up getting him suspended.

According to BBC, an Indian government official was suspended after he gave the order to drain a reservoir so he could get his phone back. Several gallons of water had to be pumped out of the dam over the course of three days after the official named Rajesh Vishwas dropped his phone while taking a selfie. The phone sustained water damage and wasn't functioning when it was eventually discovered.

Vishwas asserted that it needed to be recovered because it held private government information but now he has been charged with abusing his authority. The food inspector's phone, which was valued at approximately $1,200 (Rs. 100,000), fell into the Kherkatta Dam in the Chhattisgarh state of India. At first local divers arrived to retrieve the lost phone but when they failed, Vishwas paid for a diesel pump to be brought in. In a video statement, Vishwas claimed that he had verbal permission from an official to drain "some water into a nearby canal,” per the outlet. He also added that it "would, in fact, benefit the farmers who would have more water".

Roughly two million liters (440,000 gallons) of water were reportedly drained by the pump over the course of several days of operation which is enough to irrigate 600 hectares of agricultural land. When a second official from the water resource department showed up in response to a complaint, his mission was terminated. "He has been suspended until an inquiry. Water is an essential resource and it cannot be wasted like this," Priyanka Shukla, a Kanker district official, told The National newspaper. 

Vishwas has denied abusing his power and claimed that the water he removed was "not in usable condition" and came from the overflow portion of the dam. However, his actions have prompted condemnation from lawmakers, with the national Vice President of the state's BJP party tweeting: "When people are depending upon tankers for water facility in scorching summers, the officer has drained 41,00000 liters which could have been used for irrigation purpose for 1,500 acres of land." Well, that was surely an epic waste of water and hopefully, selfie-takers will be dead careful after this incident.