Rain sweeps away bamboo bridge on Sukari, man drowns
LATEHAR: Overnight torrential rain swept away a bamboo bridge, built by village youngsters a month ago, over the swollen Sukari river in Latehar district on Sunday.
A man, Chhotan Parahiya, from the nearly extinct primitive tribe group (PTG), drowned while trying to cross the river to fetch medicine for his ailing wife. He belonged to Jaram village, one of the five villages cut off from the outside world.
The villagers said they had not yet found Parahiya’s body but the search was on.
After the CPI (Maoist) members stalled the bridge construction project in 2008, three village youths — Dineshwar Parahia, Sikendra Singh and Anmol Beck — in August this year started building a 75-metre long and 1.5-metre lwide bamboo bridge as the recent floods made crossing the river impossible.
They managed to build one despite several odds — the structure was swept away twice even before completion of work.
Villagers said the bridge was strong enough to withstand the strong currents but it failed to bear the pressure caused by a tree which had fallen in the river after a heavy rainfall.
The incessant rains, which hit Latehar on Saturday night, cut off hundreds of students from schools. There is no government school on the other side of Sukari river and children from Jaram, Marabar, Sukari and other villages come to Pochara and Latehar after the government shut down a school in Marabar village.
Villager, Nandkishore Singh, said, “Our children will have to suffer again. We are not sure if we will be able to rebuild the bridge.”
Our children will have to suffer again. We are not sure if we will be able to rebuild the bridge NANDKISHORE SINGH, a villager