The man was removed from office. He had dropped his phone in the water tank while taking a selfie. According to him, the smartphone contained sensitive government data.

The not-so-ecological selfie story. In India, a civil servant was removed from office for abusing his position. The reason: He ordered the water tank emptied to retrieve a $1,200 cellphone he dropped while taking a selfie, according to bbc.

After several failed attempts to get the laptop out of the water by several local divers, Rajesh Vishwas decided to use drastic measures: officers then paid to bring in a diesel pump and empty the water from the Kherkatta dam in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh.

Three days later and after pumping out several million liters of water, the official who claimed his Samsung contained sensitive government data, was unable to even put his phone back into use: it was waterlogged, never to turn back on.

The water can be used to irrigate 600 hectares

The emptying of the dam did not fail to react. When Rajesh Vishwa was hammered into some media that the water he was draining was from an overflowing and “unusable” section of a dam, some politicians revolted.

The national vice president of the opposition party, for example, was outraged like this: “While people depended on tankers for their water supply during the sweltering summers, officials have emptied several million liters that should have been used to irrigate 1,500 acres. [ 600 hectares] land”.

“Water is an important resource and it cannot be wasted like this,” said a Chhattisgarh state official.