The Tungabhadra’s no-dig runs to 15 October. Machines at Gudikambali are still cutting wells in daylight.

The monsoon rule on the Tungabhadra is a calendar. The riverbed at Gudikambali is being treated as a worksite.

State rules bar sand mining in rivers from 1 June to 15 October. The Tungabhadra has a four-month no-dig. Agency operators, the public card says, are punching holes in that rule. This is an ongoing river-bed story, not a single-day raid. This desk will not turn a season of digging into a morning of arrests that nobody has counted.

The Tungabhadra has six official reaches. From July 2024 to now, 21.74 lakh tonnes have been supplied free. 2.14 lakh tonnes are currently stocked. Those two numbers are the official ledger. They are not a licence to dig in August.

Reach stocks as listed: Gudikambali 26,700 tonnes; Nadichagi 40,700; Marali 35,300; Gangavaram 1,633 tonnes. Four named piles. Six reaches. The other two reaches are not stocked on this card. This desk will not invent their heaps.

Official daily sales are about 1,500 tonnes. Illegal movement is described as about double. About is the word on the card. Double of about 1,500 is a description, not a weighbridge printout. This desk will not print 3,000 as a seized figure. No seizure total sits in these facts. No FIR number sits in these facts.

At Gudikambali, machines are digging in daylight. The riverbed looks like wells. More than 30 tippers and lorries leave in a day. Daylight is the accusation. Wells are the landscape. Thirty-plus is the traffic. A machine that works after sunrise is not hiding. A riverbed that looks like wells is not a stockpile being lifted with a chit.

The route is a map, not a charge sheet. Madhavaram towards Karnataka. Mantralayam and Naguladinne towards Telangana. After complaints, some vehicles were seized on the Mantralayam–Nandavaram border. Some is the word. This desk does not have a seizure total and will not invent one. It does not have a named politician on the cover allegation and will not invent one.

Locals alleged political cover. Mining, revenue, police, transport, Rural Water Supply and water-resources desks had not acted. That is a list of desks that stayed still. It is not a named officer. It is not a named MLA. A cover that is alleged without a name remains an allegation.

Farmers on the bank say the digging will push groundwater down. Officials claimed only stored sand was being lifted. Treat that as their line, not a finding. A well-shaped riverbed at Gudikambali sits badly next to a stored-sand sentence. A picture is not a laboratory. This desk will not convert the farmers’ fear into a water-table number it does not have.

The filing is 21 August 2026, from the Kurnool district desk, 06:12 IST. Kurnool is the district. The ban still has until 15 October. The four-month no-dig is still a rule. The six reaches still have a free-supply ledger of 21.74 lakh tonnes and a stock of 2.14 lakh tonnes.

What this desk will not do is write a raid that closed the river, a politician who signed a permit, or a tonne-count of seized sand. Those sentences are not in the file. The honest picture is the daylight machines, the well-shaped bed, the 30-plus lorries, the two-state route, some seizures after complaints, and a set of desks that had not acted.

This is not a closed case. It is a river that is being worked while the calendar says stop.