Historian M. Athar Ali writes that in Mughal India, in the 1260s, the water canals and reservoirs feeding Delhi were intentionally dried up “because the channels feeding it were dammed up by ‘dishonest men,’” referring to local protests over social and political conditions.
At least 18 people are killed and 200 injured after the Indian Army intervenes to reopen the Munak canal, which supplies New Dehli with three-fifths of its freshwater supply. The canal is shut down by economic protests in Harayana state. Sabotage of the canal left more than 10 million people in India’s capital, Delhi, without water.
Seven children are killed by a bomb thought to be aimed at Afghan police and planted at a fresh water spring in Ghor Province.
Women from the village of Rasooh are reportedly assaulted for attempting to take water from a village well. The tensions over water are related to long-standing tensions between caste groups but have been worsened by drought and water shortage.
Tensions revive in the area of Jammu and Kashmir in early 2014 when upper caste women reportedly restrict access to higher quality water sources.
A family in Madhya Pradesh state in India is killed by a small mob for illegally drawing water from a municipal pipe. Others run to collect water for themselves before the pipe runs out. Drought and inequality in water distribution lead to increasing conflict in the region. Indian media report more than 50 violent clashes in the state capital, Bhopal during May alone. Since January, 12 people are killed and even more injured.
The Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) threatens to contaminate local water resources in a letter faxed to the Directorate of Military Lands and Cantonments in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. The letter stated that the TTP had procured 200 liters of a poisonous material that would be used to contaminate water sources and reservoirs in the wards falling under Rawalpindi Cantonment Board (RCB) and Chaklala Cantonment Board (CCB) limits unless the Army stopped military operations in South Waziristan.
Protesters take to the streets in the center of Dhaka and more than 50 are injured in clashes over the potential ecological impacts of a proposed coal plant on aquatic ecosystems and fisheries. These actions follow on protests from 2016.
In military action aimed at Islamic terrorists, including Al Qaeda and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, homes, schools, and water wells are damaged and destroyed in Pakistan.
Scuffles and protests break out around New Delhi during the summer of 2012 as residents surround water delivery trucks and fight over water. The summer is the hottest in 33 years, leading to extensive energy and water shortages.