Tragedy struck a young man when he drowned in the Ravi river after he and his accomplices were illegally extracting mining material from the riverbed.
The incident took place at Chak Ram Sahai village falling in Dinanagar subdivision on Sunday. The deceased has been identified as Harmanpreet Singh (23) of Ajnala. The police reached the site immediately after the incident.
Sources say people are openly extracting mining material from the riverbed of the Ravi despite the fact that the National Green Tribunal (NGT) has banned the exercise.
The site is near Makkoran Pattan, the point of confluence of the Ravi and Ujh rivers, and which is considered to be a mining-rich area. The exact name of the desilting site where the tragedy took place is Raji Beli.
XEN (Mining) Gurbir Singh, however, denied that any unauthorised extraction was going on. “We are tightly monitoring the situation and we can say with surety that no illegal mining is going on in Gurdaspur district,” he said.
Government officials said Harmanpreet Singh had died by suicide after taking off his clothes. However, when the body of Harmanpreet was fished out, he was wearing clothes, thus negating the claims of the officials.
“The fact is that he drowned in the waters of the Ravi,” said a local resident.