J&K: 'Boatman Charged Rs 1.5 L to Ferry'

Rashid Ali Dar, principal district and sessions court judge in Srinagar, recalls how a young man paid Rs 1.5 lakh to a boatman from Dal Lake to rescue his family. "The compassionate young man told his father, who was accompanying the boatman, to ferry all those stranded in the house on that afternoon," says Dar, referring to the three storey house in Jawahar Nagar, Srinagar, where he, his family and 15 others were trapped on September 16.

Jawahar Nagar, Raj Bagh and Gogji Bagh are low lying areas situated on the banks of Srinagar's flood spill channel. When the Jhelum River flooded, a massive amount of water caused the flood channel to overflow, submerging these areas completely.

Speaking from his native village in Chadoora town, Budgam district of central Kashmir, Dar recalls, "It was around 10.30 pm on September 6 when my maid came running to say that flood water was entering the ground floor of my quarters. When I peered out of the window from the second floor, I saw gushing water engulfing the whole locality with full force." Dar and his family managed to make their way to a nearby house where they took shelter. "There was no food and drinking water," he says, revealing two storeys of this house were submerged.

By boat, the family made it to the flood channel bank of Jawahar Nagar where they climbed on to a tipper (dump truck) volunteers were using to ferry those stranded towards Barzulla bridge. "Tippers were the only mode of transport that could run through four feet water," says Dar, who took shelter at a friend's house in Hyderpora before leaving for Chadoora.

Ghulam Rasool Mir, 80 and his wife, though living with the fear of the first storey of their house being submerged, were more concerned for their daughters living in other areas of Srinagar. They were also anxious that their son, based in New York, could not reach them because both phone lines and internet were down. Rasool, who runs a chemist shop in Batamaloo, couldn't even access medicines for himself because his shop was submerged in 12 feet of water. "It was ironic that though I sell medicine to hundreds of people every day, I could not get a tablet to keep my blood pressure under control," he says.

Another Batamaloo resident Mohammad Sidiq, 60, and his brothers living in adjacent houses prayed for their safety and nothing else. "But I can't express how I felt when I saw my newly constructed house at Batamaloo's main bazaar flooded with 10 feet of water within a few hours on September 13 night," he says, adding, "It was like doomsday."