Sivasagar Hero Saves Hundreds During Brutal Assam Floods

Guwahati: The Dikhow River surged at 10:30 a.m. on July 19. It swallowed Nepali Khuti in Bihubor’s Quarry No. 2 with terrifying speed. Twenty-six-year-old Shravan Prasad scrambled to move his parents and youngest brother, Prince, to high ground. He left his other brother, Samir, behind. Then the paths vanished.

Samir called twenty-seven times as water reached his neck. Simultaneously, two hundred villagers huddled on nearby rooftops. Shravan held the phone. He knew the math of the catastrophe. He made the call.

"I said, if I come for you, those two hundred people will die. I have to go to them first," Shravan said. He hung up and paddled into the deluge.

No state rescue teams could reach the village. Shravan and a growing fleet of volunteers worked until evening. They navigated submerged lanes to reach the old and the sick. They pulled over 1,000 residents from the rising tide. Samir eventually escaped on his own. The village remains, but the scars are deep. The flood destroyed furniture, legal documents, and the walls of homes. Sivasagar now remembers the man who faced an impossible choice and refused to let his neighbors drown.