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Kolkata: From Chiriya More in Dumdum, a north Kolkata suburb, an autorickshaw to the Cossipore Gun and Shell Factory takes barely five to seven minutes. Walk up the road from there and after a kilometre or so you reach Cossipore Jetty and Ferry Services. There is water everywhere, the Ganga flowing right past. Yet not a drop to drink.

This has been the situation in Cossipore’s Jyotinagar Colony since May 29, 2026. The water supply has been cut for 90 days. The street lights went too, though those have since been restored.

Why? Residents say the reason is that the roughly 5,000 people who live there are Muslims who did not vote for the BJP. They say local MLA Ritesh Tiwari told them as much, and that he ordered the supply stopped. The residents have moved the Calcutta High Court with a writ petition. It is yet to be heard.

I reached the colony on the morning of Rakhi, hot and heavy with humidity. The first thing I noticed was the dried up water containers outside every household. Not a trace of a single drop. A hand driven van stood loaded with more containers, a few adolescent girls waiting beside it, ready to walk at least a kilometre and a half for drinking water. They go every day. Sometimes they have to pay for the water, sometimes not.

The Muslim residents of Jyotinagar Colony in Kolkata’s Cossipore locality have been denied water supply, a basic human need, for three months. Since women and men do not use the river at the same time, it has forced the women to return repeatedly to the only source of water – a murky river filled with waste and weeds – when they can be alone. Photo: Anwesha Banerjee.

The Hindu basti barely 500 metres away has shared what it can, a bucket here and there for daily use. But that is not sustainable, and there is fear in it too. Some Hindu residents said they worry that if they are seen standing with their Muslim neighbours, their own supply could be cut in the same way.

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