India, Feb. 3 -- Arun Prajapat knew trouble was brewing, but did not expect it to arrive so suddenly and upend his life. On December 28, 2025, while working at a construction site, he received a call from his mother. The piped water in their home, she said, smelled foul and was no longer drinkable. It was time, she insisted, to buy a filter. By the following day, her body began to fail her. "She complained of severe abdominal pain and nausea. There was little time to understand what was happening. After two bouts of diarrhoea and vomiting, she died before we could reach a hospital," Prajapat recalls. In the days that followed, the illness spread across Bhagirathpura, a congested, neighbourhood in Madhya Pradesh's Indore city. Residents es...