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.Over the years, the Supreme Court and high courts have reminded everyone that “water is a basic right under the right to life enshrined in the Constitution of India, Article 32. That cannot be denied by any terms and condition.” Yet Jyotinagar Colony near Chitpur has been surviving without water for the last 90 days.Residents say five drinking water taps were cut off, and that it happened because most of the slum is Muslim. “Why is the water stopped? It is because we are Muslims. We have informed the borough office and the police station many times, but nothing has happened,” said Akbar Ali. Arjina Bibi and Afroza said the same. A young man who did not want to be named said, “The media has reported it. But what is the use? We want water.”Roshmila Khatun, a woman in her early twenties, said people are being forced to bathe in the river, and that skin diseases have followed. Children are missing school. The elderly and the ill are suffering. “We are using this Ganga water for everything. Just see the filth and the garbage in it. Our children bathe here. Even babies of six and seven months are brought to the ghat and bathed there. Their skin turns red, rashes all over their tiny bodies.”A child living in Cossipore’s Jyotinagar Colony develops rashes due to the lack of clean sources of water to bathe and wash clothes in or to drink. Photo: Anwesha BanerjeeHer neighbour Rikta Bibi described something worse. “A few days ago one of our neighbours died. Before the final rites we have to bathe him and dress him, as our customs require. We had no water for that. We brought this filthy river water and performed the rites with it. Just imagine,” she says.Saraswati, from the Hindu community, has lived here more than 60 years. “Children of two or three are going down to the bank of the river. Just a few days ago a baby almost drowned. If something happens, who will take responsibility?” Others from both communities said the same thing. If a child is lost to this, the loss belongs to the whole neighbourhood.A group of women who went to meet Tiwari said he abused them and used religious slurs. One elderly woman recalled, “He spoke to us without any respect, addressing us with tui. He said, why did you build a mosque and call out to Allah there? Have you ever seen him? Can you not pray at home? Go, go. I have not stopped your water. I can do nothing for you.” Swati Bibi, who was in the group, said, “The MLA told us to go to court. He said this is Kolkata Port Trust land and that we have encroached on it. That is why the water and, earlier, the electricity were stopped.”Drums that the residents of Cossipore’s Jyotinagar Colony used to collect clean water in. Photo: Anwesha BanerjeeBut humanity is alive here. By the time I had spent a while in the colony my own bottle was empty and I was sweating through everything. I was badly dehydrated and my muscles had begun to cramp. There were two or three small stationery shops on the lane and not a single bottle of water in any of them. People here have no bottled water to fall back on in an emergency. And water has always been an emergency.When I was close to passing out, the men and women there brought out their own drinking water, carried from a kilometre and a half away, and gave me a bhand of tea. I was ashamed to drink it. It felt like theft. I think they understood, because they said, almost together, “Didi, you have come to us. For 90 days we have been living without drinking water and without water for anything else. We struggle for every drop. But we are not inhuman. It is our duty to give you water. Without it you could die.” I could not hold back my tears.Moinuddin Sheikh, a shopkeeper who lives in the colony, said, “After every request failed and the administration turned a deaf ear, we filed a writ petition in the Calcutta High Court ten days ago. The first hearing date has not been announced yet.” He had questions of his own. “Our girls and women are walking long distances for drinking water. They are bathing in the open river. Outsiders come and sit by the bank and visit the temples near the jetty all the time. If something happens to our women, who will take responsibility?”A street in Cossipore’s Jyotinagar Colony, Kolkata, where residents have been deprived of water for weeks. Photo: Anwesha BanerjeeAlmost everyone said the same thing. They have lived here for decades. Governments have come and gone and none of them has treated the colony like this, on the basis of religion alone. If we are encroachers, several asked, why did nobody say so for seventy years? “Our slum is a registered one. How did it suddenly become KoPT land, and how can they want to evict us?” asked Babu Gazi.Rikta Bibi put the question that everyone kept circling back to. “Would our Allah or your Bhagwan ever say do not give them water? I have not seen Allah and you have not seen Bhagwan, but we know they are guiding us. The government is dividing us on religion. We will survive. They will not. We are all slum dwellers and water belongs to everyone. Those who are stopping our water should remember that the same thing can come for them.”The Wire contacted MLA Ritesh Tiwari, Kolkata Municipal Commissioner Smita Pandey and Kolkata Port Trust public relations officer Sanjay Mukherjee for their response. None had replied at the time of publication. Pratip Nag, vice president of the Asangathita Kshetra Sramik Sangrami Mancha, said on behalf of the organisation, “We consider stopping water on religious grounds a crime.”As I left, a private charity called Hope was handing out food to the smaller children. They get food and water once a day from it. That is the only certainty here. Everything else is not. “Please do something so that we get water again. Children, the elderly, the sick, everyone is suffering. Please, please keep us in your mind and in your prayers.” The appeal is still ringing in my ears.