Madhya Pradesh says 8 died of Indore water contamination. But records show 18 families compensated

Officials conduct inspection of drains and pipelines following a diarrhoea outbreak caused by contaminated water, at Bhagirathpura area, in Indore. (PTI)

For the first time since several patients died after drinking contaminated water in Madhya Pradesh’s Indore district, the full scale of the tragedy has been revealed, with government records showing that the families of 18 people who died have been given compensation, The Indian Express has learnt.

Between December 24, 2025, and January 6 this year, several people died after allegedly drinking contaminated water in Indore’s Bhagirathpura. While a public toilet without the mandatory septic tank in the area was initially blamed for the contamination, authorities are now investigating whether local borewell connections caused the contamination.

Government records have now put numbers to the Bhagirathpura tragedy, showing that the Indore district administration has given checks of Rs 2 lakh to 18 families even as the state told the Madhya Pradesh High Court just a day before that the toll was eight. Meanwhile, one family is still waiting for their cheque, with the administration helping victim families open bank accounts and complete other formalities.

On his part, Chief Minister Mohan Yadav said Wednesday not to focus on the death figures, and that the loss of “even a single life is extremely painful for us”.

“Therefore, we don’t delve into statistics. It’s a different matter that the administration follows its own procedures. Generally, only those cases where post-mortems were performed were considered valid figures,” he said.

On Tuesday, a Division Bench of the Madhya Pradesh High Court, comprising Justice Vijay Kumar Shukla and Justice Alok Awasthi, pulled up the state over the death toll. It also expressed displeasure over the state’s handling of the situation, observing: “Such an insensitive response from the government… this incident has brought such a bad name to Indore, which is one of the cleanest cities of the country. It has become a news matter all over India and the world too.”

These remarks came after the state tried to explain that a medical board was still counting the dead and that the process was complicated due to natural deaths and the lack of post-mortem reports. The state had also told the court that eight people had died.

A senior government official explained the discrepancy, saying that some families did not conduct post-mortems.

“The local administration, including senior leaders such as Minister Kailash Vijayvargiya, decided to provide cheques to all reported cases of death and not wait for a final report. Hence the cheques were distributed. A death audit is underway to ascertain the actual toll,” the official said.

The Indian Express went through a 50-page bacterial test report conducted by the Indore Municipal Corporation in its water testing laboratory.

A laboratory water test conducted by the Indore Municipal Corporation’s Water Testing Laboratory in Musakhedi has confirmed the presence of faecal contamination in groundwater drawn from Bhagirathpura.

A total of 35 out of 51 samples recorded a faecal coliform bacterial count. The test, dated January 3, 2026, analysed a 500 ml sample collected from 51 boring sources in Bhagirathpura.

According to the test report, the sample — submitted by the assistant engineer of the water supply wing on January 1 — recorded a faecal coliform bacterial count ranging from 13 to 360 per millilitre, as against the Indian standard of zero. This, according to a senior official of the Indore Municipal Corporation, means that the “contamination level found in Bhagirathpura is far beyond what is considered safe”.

After the spread of contamination was traced to local borewells, the administration began chlorination exercises targeting over 500 such connections, as well as geo-tagging borewells to ensure accurate mapping and monitoring of sources.