The Zira river has fallen to hands of mafia who are engaged in indiscriminate sand mining here. The river flows from Malikhaman reserve forest under Rehetikhol of Chhattisgarh and merges with the Mahanadi at Brahmanturum under Bheden block of Bargarh district. It covers more than 78 km in Odisha and 13 villages of Chhattisgarh and 56 villages of Odisha. The riverside populace depends on the river for drinking and irrigation purposes. Every day hundreds of truck loads of sand are lifted from the river bed by use of machines and sent to different places, even out of the district. It has been a lucrative money-spinning business in the
locality. Since mostly the transaction is done illegally, the State Government is losing lakhs of rupees in terms of revenue. Protesting the incident, the BJP Bargarh unit gheraoed the Tehsil office here demanding immediate action against the sand mafia and the officials involved in the illegal transactions.