The curse of Faridabad's 'Khooni Jheel'

Locals believe occult powers around the lake influenced three young men who drowned there last month

I still remember the first time I saw the secret lakes of Faridabad. We were hiking through the thorny Aravali scrub when we came across the first one, its eerily blue waters stretched for kilometers. When we finally reached its banks and peered into the water, we couldn’t see the bottom. The silence was unearthly and there were no signs of life anywhere around the lake. It was a queer sort of place. Over the years, on subsequent trips to the forests of Asola and beyond, I have come across many such water bodies, all created by the indiscriminate mining that took place here in the 80s and 90s. So much land was dynamited that ground water pooled in to form these lakes. The dynamite residue pollutes the lakes till date, rendering them uninhabitable. Their barren yet beautiful landscape has long haunted my dreams. Still, I was surprised to meet someone who attributed evil powers to them.

“Those lakes are cursed,” said Sheesh Pal Sharma, a contractor who lives not far from them in Sangam Vihar. “In my neighbourhood, we have come to believe that evil lurks in their depths.” I couldn’t understand his vehemence till he narrated to me, the story of his three neighbours who drowned there last month. Apparently, four young men, all from the same family, had gone there to look at a plot of land that was for sale. It was inside a protected forest and consequently, the sale would have to be off the books. Not only were they getting it on the cheap, there was still a small amount of illegal mining happening there, which could offer lucrative prospects. After they’d looked around, they decided to go to one of the lakes nearby for a spot of evening fun. One of the young men decided to go for a swim. “It was strictly against the rules there, but since when has that stopped anyone?” said Sharma. “Especially in a lake that was so far away from civilisation.” 

The events that transpired later were sadly predictable. The man who went into the water didn’t really know how to swim, two went in foolishly to save him. The fourth watched helplessly as his cousins and uncle struggled in the water. By the time help arrived, all that remained to be done was to fish their bodies out of the water. Two of the victims were still holding hands. “Till date, the entire gali, lane, is shrouded in grief, as we had all grown up with the three men who lost their lives in the killer lakes of Faridabad,” said Sharma. 

Since the incident, Sharma and his neighbours have come to believe that evil resides in these lakes, locally called Khooni Jheel (bloody water). “Think about it,” said he, “nothing is able to survive there, not even fish or birds.” Also, they believed that some occult powers around the lake influenced the victims to make ill-advised decisions the day they drowned. “They were family men, one has left behind a wife and infant,” said he. “None of them had ever done anything as risky as jumping into an unknown stretch of water before.” This belief has been strengthened by the fact that the lake had claimed several lives every year. 

It could also be, said I, that the lakes themselves weren’t evil, just dangerous simply because they were uncharted and poorly administered. “It could,” agreed Sharma. “But it could also be that greed and avarice that prompted the uncontrolled mining of the Aravalis have tainted them forever and nothing good will ever spring forth from them…”