Puttur: Unsolved Mystery Behind Recurrent Lightning Strikes at Uliabail
By Arun Uppinangady
Daijiworld Media Network—Puttur (RD/CN)
Puttur, Jun 21: The peasant community residing at Uliabail in Patrame village, near here, turns apprehensive as the monsoon sets in every year. All the farmers and labourers abruptly discontinue their agricultural activities in the paddy fields and plantations across Uliabail once they see dark clouds in the sky and the first signs of lightning.
The people’s anxiety is not without basis for, every year in the past decade, lightning strikes have been frequent at a specific plot of land that lies beside a paddy field in Patrame village about 25 kilometers away from Uppinangady.
The plot of land belongs to Ajit Kumar. Several palm trees in his plantations and other fruit-yielding trees have been totally damaged as a result.
The lightning that struck about a year and a half ago also killed two of the farm hands. Veerappa Gowda and Deekayya Kumar, the deceased, were both residents of Uliabail while Govind Kumbara, Shekar Kumbara, and Veerendra Kumar were injured in that incident.
As a result, fear grips the local residents and farm hands as the rains begin. The locals have no answer as to why lightning repeatedly strikes this particular spot. They wonder if there are any mineral deposits lying beneath the soil here that attracts lightning.
The local residents have urged geologists to undertake a study on the lightning prone spot as it continuously damages the farm produce and has also taken several lives already.
During the ‘gram sabha’ held in Patrame gram panchayat a few years ago, the local administration had written to the Dakshina Kannada deputy commissioner (DC) urging him to assign geologists to undertake laboratory tests of the soil samples.
The DC had already written to the geology department to do the needful in this regard, but so far nobody has arrived at the spot to collect the sample conduct an initial survey.
The locals demand that the concerned department take appropriate precautionary measures to prevent further loss of life and farm produce this monsoon season and thereafter.