One and a half million tonnes of boulders, sand and gravel have been extracted from the Sukhnag stream in the central Kashmir district of Budgam, with the panel cautioning of “large-scale, unregulated and potentially illegal mining” in the waterbody, according to a report submitted by a supervisory committee to the National Green Tribunal (NGT).The report submitted by the supervisory committee states that the mining has significantly changed the stream’s form and damaged its aquifer systems.But that does not convey the real scale of the damage that may have been caused.One and a half million tonnes is roughly equal to the weight of 250,000 African elephants, or 7,500 Blue whales, or 5,906 Statues of Liberty, or 148 Eiffel Towers. An average human adult weighs about 62 kg. So, around 24.2 million human adults would together weigh about 1.5 million tonnes.According to the 2011 census, the population of Jammu and Kashmir was 12.25 million. It follows then that the amount of riverbed material extracted from the Sukhnag stream, which has a length of only 54 km and a basin size of 400 km, weighs double the weight of the whole population of Jammu and Kashmir.That is the scale of the plunder that we have wrought upon the Sukhnag stream. On July 21, flash flooding in the Sukhnag swept away 32 shops in a shopping complex in Beerwah in Budgam district. One person was killed, the Sukhnag diversion at Beerwah was washed away, a newly constructed bridge sustained structural damage, and breaches were reported at several places along the embankments of the stream.The shopping complex at Beerwah, or what remains of it. Photo: Idrees Abbas.Mohammad Yusuf Mir says that his garment shop ‘Mir Textiles’ was housed in the complex that was washed away. Mir says that when the complex was washed away, he was at the hospital helping his wife deliver a baby. He could not save anything from this shop. He had taken a loan from the bank and mortgaged his wife’s gold to set it up.Praying for the water levels to recede. Photo: Idrees Abbas.Flash flooding and ensuing landslides have become a norm in the Himalayas. Between early 2022 and 2025 alone, 822 days of heavy rain, flooding and landslides killed 2,863 people in 13 Himalayan states and Union territories, including Jammu and Kashmir. Examples of such events in recent years include the Chamoli disaster (February 7, 2021), Kishtwar/Dachhan (July 2021), the South Lhonak glacial lake outburst flood in Sikkim (October 3-4, 2023); the Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand floods (August 2023) and Kishtwar/Chisoti, Jammu and Kashmir (August 2025).At the moment of writing, over 30 people have been killed, per one estimate, in flash flooding and the consequent landslides in Jammu and Kashmir since June. While sudden bursts of rainfall during and after the monsoon in the Himalayas can be attributed to climate change, floods can also be a consequence of wanton construction along river banks and changes to a river’s course caused by illegal and excessive mining. The cutting of mountain slopes and unrestricted deforestation can result in landslides.The bridge that was washed away at Beerwah. Photo: Idrees Abbas.In the Kashmir valley, localised flooding caused by the sudden overflowing of various smaller streams has become recurrent in the past five years or so. Reasons can include increased encroachment upon wetland areas, encroachment on the embankments of rivers and, again, excessive mining in riverbeds.Mohammad Abid from Beerwah, who owned the complex, alleges that the complex got washed away because of digging in the riverbed.“Digging work in the river caused a change in the riverbed level. This side of the riverbed became deeper, while the opposite side, where material was dumped, was elevated. As a result, when the water came gushing down yesterday, this side of the embankment had to face the brunt of the force, and our building could not withstand it,” Abid explains.He does not say who was carrying out the “digging” work in the river.People look for their belongings as the waters recede in the Sukhnag. Photo: Idrees Abbas.While most shop owners at Beerwah attribute the flash floods to the ‘wrath of God’ for the ‘waywardness of society’, nobody is forthcoming on who owned the land that the shops were standing on.However, Mir chips in in a tone that does not betray his sense of loss. “When we play with nature, this is the result. We have become so selfish with plundering nature that we forgot that our actions have consequences.”Excavators remove construction material from near the washed-away bridge. Photo: Idrees Abbas.Since 2021, Jammu and Kashmir has seen a string of destructive cloudburst-triggered flash floods, mostly during July to September. Such events have been concentrated in the mountainous Chenab Valley (Doda, Kishtwar, Ramban) and the Pir Panjal region (Poonch and Rajouri). But the Kashmir valley is also seeing flash flooding in its streams.Standing guard over follies. Photo: Idrees Abbas.The terrain of the Himalayan region is steep. In order to construct buildings and other infrastructure, governments and people often alter the natural topography of these areas – slopes are flattened, embankments are eroded, trees and forests are cut down and construction material dumped at places where it obstructs the flow of water.Unregulated construction near seasonal streams and nullahs thus invites disasters.Poor planning and reckless construction are putting people and property in harm’s way. In the name of development and tourism, as roads, hotels, resorts, car parks and shopping complexes are being built in flood-prone areas and even, in some cases, on the riverbed itself, the natural flow of rivers is constricted. Coupled with illegal mining, river flows are being altered.When rainfall occurs, the river breaches its embankments and wreaks havoc.As a consequence of deforestation and the cutting away of slopes to make way for infrastructure, the soil also becomes loose and slides away after even a medium amount of rainfall. Hence, a landslide. The following are a few instances of such landslides in Jammu and Kashmir:November 2018, Ramban: three killedDecember 2019, Khooni Nallah, Ramban district: two killedMarch 2023, Seri village near Ramban town: one killed September 2023, Kishtwari Pathar, Chamalwas, Banihal, Ramban: four killedNovember 15, 2023, Assar area, Doda: ~39 killedConstruction material is hauled out from the Sukhnag. Photo: Idrees Abbas.The July 21 flash flood was caused by a sudden spell of intense rainfall in Tosa Maidan, the source of the Sukhnag stream. The rainfall monitoring station at Beerwah recorded 38 mm of rain, while precipitation in the upper catchment around Tosa Maidan was estimated to have surpassed 100 mm, resulting in a sudden surge in the river’s water level.The remains. Photo: Idrees Abbas.The Sukhnag flows through several villages of central Kashmir, including Arizal, Zanigam, Sail, Beerwah, Rathsun, Makhama, Kawoosa and Narbal. All these areas are vulnerable to sudden flooding following heavy rainfall in the upper catchment.But the stream and these villages, like others in Kashmir valley, have been left to fend for themselves.The report by the supervisory committee submitted to the NGT states that “‘large-scale, unregulated and potentially illegal extraction of riverbed material has resulted in significant alteration of river morphology and damage to the underlying aquifer systems”.’ It continues:“The absence of scientific assessment, coupled with non-compliance with established regulatory provisions, indicates serious institutional lapses. The environmental degradation thus caused is likely to have long-term adverse impacts on the river ecosystem, as well as on dependent livelihoods of the fisheries sector and depletion in the water level.”The devastation wreaked upon the Sukhnag can be gauged by the fact that a month before the river wreaked havoc in Beerwah, a report had said that because of the extensive mining, water level had fallen below the riverbed at places like Sail, just five kilometres from the place where the shopping complex was washed away on July 21.Also read: How Authorities Plundered a River in Kashmir for the Mirage of Post-2019 ‘Prosperity’Men look on as material is dredged from a Sukhnag in spate. Photo: Idrees Abbas.Kashmir is a landlocked valley in which streams and rivers flow aplenty. Coupled with climate change, such erosion of rivers can turn deadly. The incident at Beerwah is just one of its many. If preventive measures including immediate halting of illegal mining, rapid afforestation of denuded catchments, restoration of riparian buffers, removal of illegal constructions encroaching on riverbeds and embankments, and sustained monitoring of vulnerable stretches are not carried out, Kashmir might be looking at a dark future.Mudabbir Ahmad Tak is a teacher and freelance writer with a doctorate in mass communication and journalism. Idrees Abbas is a multimedia journalist based in Kashmir.