How a canal breach rewrote Madhopur’s map of Punjab
The night of August 26 changed everything for Bhedian Buzurg, a village that believed it stood beyond the reach of floods.
4 min read
A breach in the canal near Bhedian Buzurg village. A youth drove a JCB into the canal and cut it to divert water into the Ravi river. (Express Photo by Kamaldeep Singh Brar)The topography near the Madhopur headworks, built by the British between 1872 and 1879 to divert Ravi’s waters into the Upper Bari Doab Canal (UBDC), changed overnight recently. The manicured embankments and green fields gave way to a raw, broken landscape: roads torn apart, trees uprooted like matchsticks, and gaping breaches carved by raging water.
The panic that gripped Punjab on August 27, when two floodgates at the Madhopur headworks collapsed, was only the tip of a crisis that had already been unleashed the previous night without any warning.
At Bhedian Buzurg, the last village of Punjab on the Indo-Pak border, perched about 100 feet above the Ravi and barely a kilometre from the headworks, the locals’ confidence in its geography was shattered forever. The villagers had always believed their elevation protected them. “I am a witness to the 1988 floods. Our village didn’t get a drop then. Earlier too, our elders had never spoken about floods. We thought we were safe for life,” said Dinak Raj, president of Bhagat Mahasabha Welfare Society and a retired Water Resources Department official. “That night changed everything”.
The nightmare began on August 26, around 9 pm, when the Madhopur Barrage Left Canal ripped open near Bhedian Buzurg. Within minutes, Ravi’s waters roared through the breach, swallowing farmland and homestead. The current was so fierce it uprooted decades-old trees and flattened a house.
“We got only five minutes’ warning,” recalled Raj. “I was on an evening walk when someone from Sujanpur told me the canal might break. Before I could even alert the staff or call for machines, the breach had happened. I couldn’t reach my home. I spent the whole night on a hillside”.
As water levels rose, desperate measures followed. “A youth named Karan drove a JCB into the raging canal and cut it near Madhopur railway bridge to divert water into the Ravi,” Raj said, his eyes brimming. “He did it on the Deputy Commissioner’s order, risking his life. If he hadn’t, our village would have vanished from the map”.
Pathankot Deputy Commissioner Aditya Uppal confirmed the call. “We had to make an intentional breach to save lives,” he said. But the relief of survival came with devastation: around 60 families lost everything. A widow with three children stood among the ruins of her house as Raj accused the UBDC authorities of negligence. “Those officers are responsible. The Chief Minister must act,” he said.
The Left Marginal Bundh of the Madhopur Barrage had shown cracks earlier that day. “By afternoon, leaks had started from several places,” said Senior Engineer Gurpinder Singh Sandhu. “It broke in the evening.” A flash flood from the Basoli side compounded the crisis, bringing down boulders, tree trunks, and debris that jammed the gates. “Trees and trash got stuck, boulders wedged in. The gates couldn’t operate properly,” Sandhu said.
Despite 20 of the 54 gates being open when the bundh gave way, the damage was done. The UBDC corridor was flooded, and the canal carved a 400-metre scar before being forcibly connected to the Ravi. Even now, 10 days later, water continues to drain into the river. “Until the upper breach is plugged, it won’t stop,” said Sandhu.
The Madhopur section, which primarily serves power generation before feeding irrigation downstream, lies in disarray. “Irrigation won’t suffer, there’s enough water in the system,” Sandhu said. But as officials scramble to repair the bundh and plan canal restoration, the people of Bhedian Buzurg are left staring at a new reality: geography can no longer guarantee safety.
Punjab Water Resources Minister Barinder Kumar Goyal last week said a private company, “Level 19 Biz Private Limited”, which had been engaged in 2024 to assess the structural strength of Madhopur headworks gates, wrongly certified them as capable of withstanding 6.25 lakh cusecs of water.
However, the gates failed to manage even half the certified capacity, leading to their collapse and the tragic death of a department employee. Goyal said a notice has been served to the company and punitive action is being initiated.
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