Suresh Kumar’s eyes sparkle as he recalls his childhood days spent in the Ghaggar river’s clear waters, catching fish, and soaking up the sun with friends. “We’d spot fish swimming; it was crystal clear,” he exclaims, still in awe. This was back when the intermittent, monsoon-fed river was the heartbeat of Mallewala village in Haryana’s Sirsa, around 250 kilometres west of Delhi.

Staying a stone’s throw away from the river that primarily flows through parts of Haryana and Punjab, Kumar, a primary school teacher in his late 40s, remembers Ghaggar once buzzing with life: kids bathing, women washing clothes, and farmers leading their animals to drink from its waters. His college friends would marvel at the river’s beauty when they’d visit him from Hisar and he’d take them on impromptu boating trips.

His grandmother would tell tales of the river’s waters, so sweet and clean that farmers would brew tea with it and carry gallons home for cooking. That began to change in 2007.

“Now it stinks, it’s hard to go near,” Kumar says, his face falling. The Ghaggar, once a symbol of life and sustenance, has been ravaged by untreated sewage and industrial waste. It flows through Haryana, entering at Panchkula and passing through Ambala, Kaithal, and Fatehabad before reaching Sirsa. Now, it leaves behind a trail of disease and despair.

Cancer crisis

Heavily dependent on Ghaggar for irrigation and drinking water, Mallewala village, with a population of around 4,000, is grappling with a cancer crisis. Over 25-30 people have died of the disease over the past decade, claim locals, sparking fears that pollution from the nearby Ghaggar may be to blame.

Kumar recalls the village’s cancer cases surged after 2007, the year the Ghaggar river began showing signs of severe pollution. His sister-in-law succumbed to breast cancer three years ago after a decade of treatment. His older brother was diagnosed with urine bladder cancer a year ago.

Every second house bears the scar of the disease, with someone either having lost a loved one or fighting for survival. The treatment is financially crippling and emotionally draining, made worse by the absence of government or private cancer facilities in Sirsa. The residents are forced to travel to Hisar within Haryana or to the State capital Chandigarh, or seek treatment in distant cities like Bhatinda in Punjab and Jaipur and Bikaner in Rajasthan.

Gurlal Singh, 38, lost his father and two uncles to cancer within a few years, a decade ago. The memories of his family’s struggle still haunt him: the financial strain, the emotional toll, the desperation. “We sold 7 kanals (.8 acres) of our agricultural land to pay for my father’s treatment,” he recalls, his voice heavy with grief. The cancer was diagnosed at a late stage, a consequence of lack of awareness, Gurlal believes. His father spent over a month in a private hospital in Bhatinda, and earlier, a month in Jaipur, an ordeal that depleted the family’s resources.

Sukhbir Kaur, 52, a domestic worker, was diagnosed with uterine cancer in 2016, after she got herself examined due to excessive bleeding. She borrowed money on interest, pawned her jewellery, and sought help from the non-profit Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee in Punjab to scrape together ₹9 lakh for treatment at a private hospital in Hisar. “After the diagnosis, we went to AIIMS, in Bhatinda, hoping for less expensive treatment. But the waiting time was very long. We did not get appointment even after a 10-day wait. So we decided to return to Hisar for treatment,” says Sukhbir’s daughter Soma, who works with the Home Guards.

Sukhbir’s battle continues, though her medicines have stopped. She’s still under constant medical scrutiny, with tests draining her meagre resources every six months. “The tests cost no less than ₹20,000 to ₹25,000. The interest on the loan against the jewellery is piling up,” says Soma. The Scheduled Caste family has no help.

Her legs, swollen and weary, Sukhbir still toils — washing utensils at weddings, tending to animals — just to survive. Her husband, Gurjat Singh, lies bedridden, afflicted with lung and heart disease. “Doctors says his days are numbered,” says Sukhbir, in Punjabi, pointing towards her husband lying on a bed near her.

Gurlal points an accusing finger at the drinking water, suspecting it’s the culprit behind the surge in cancer cases. Yet, he laments, the disease remains a social taboo, shrouded in silence and stigma. His plea is for more awareness, early diagnosis, and government intervention. “In my lifetime, I’ve never heard of a government-organised camp or a survey to screen for cancer patients,” he says, frustration etched in his voice. “Sarkar ka koi support nahi hai” (There’s no support from the government), he asserts, echoing the collective despair of a village left to fend for itself against cancer’s deadly march.

Pawan, a local journalist, explains, “The social stigma surrounding cancer is palpable, with people reluctant to speak openly about it. They fear being socially ostracised, and it also affects wedding prospects in the family.”

Locals also blame cancer on the excessive use of fertilisers and pesticides, Sirsa being Haryana’s cotton-belt. Ground water too raises cancer risk.

The lack of district-wise data

Cancer is not a notifiable disease in Haryana and at the national level, meaning private hospitals and diagnostic centres are not mandated to report new cases to government health authorities. It is a non-communicable disease, unlike infectious illnesses that require immediate, emergency containment. However, in the absence of mandatory reporting, cancer data is fragmented, often relying on voluntary hospital-based and population-based registries that may cover only a small fraction of the population. 

The lack of reliable, up-to-date data on cancer cases makes it tough to pinpoint areas with high incidence or types of cancer that are on the rise. This leads to inefficient allocation of resources, like insufficient treatment centres in areas that need them most. It also stalls public health efforts, including screening programmes, making early detection a challenge.

Director General, Health Services, Manish Bansal, says it is “desired”, for private hospitals and diagnostic labs in Haryana to share cancer patients data. Since a 2016 government notification, the health department regularly collects data from private hospitals in the State, he says.

With many going to other States for treatment though, there is a gap in data. As per the Haryana health department report, based on the data collected by Civil Surgeons across the State, the average annual incidence of cancer cases in Sirsa is 110 for four years duration from 2020-24.

According to the Hospital-based Cancer Registry report by  the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and the National Cancer Registry Programme (NCRP), the average number of cancer patients in Sirsa from 2020-24 is 136.

However, both figures are in sharp contrast to a report of the Population Based Cancer Registry (PBCR), ‘Haryana Cancer Atlas’, implemented in State from 2016 to 2018, in collaboration with National Centre for Disease Informatics and Research (NCDIR) Bengaluru. As per “Development of An Atlas Of Cancer in Haryana State” project report, that covered data accrued over a two-year period — January 1, 2016 to December 31, 2017 — and over 120 centres within and outside Haryana, the total number of patients in Sirsa for two years was 1,509, including 720 women, with an annual average of 754 patients.

The report identified lung, mouth and oesophagus as leading cancer sites in men in Sirsa, and the three most common cancers in women were breast, cervix, uterine and ovarian.

For Fatehabad, the annual average figures as per Haryana Atlas Cancer report are 587 for 2016-17, but the ICMR and State Health Department reports suggest an annual average cases of 126 and 352 for 2020-24.

Similarly, the State government figures pegged the annual cancer cases for Haryana for 2022-23 and 2023-24 at 13,256 and 15,015 respectively, but the estimated numbers of cancer cases in Haryana as per National Cancer Registry Programme report 2020, maintained by ICMR-NCRP, for 2023 and 2024 are 31,679 and 32,513 respectively.

The Haryana Cancer Atlas project, though an initiative representing an analytical estimate of the true cancer burden, fizzled out after the first report due to lack of co-operation from the private hospitals and labs, who saw it as an “additional burden”, and the large costs involved in its implementation, says a State Health Department official, on condition of anonymity.

However, based on the number of beneficiaries of various government schemes for cancer patients in Haryana, Deputy Civil Surgeon, Sirsa, Vipul Gupta, rules out any “exponential surge” in cancer in the district, emphasising that the increase is “routine”. “We verify cancer patients for free bus travel in Haryana Roadways and a pension scheme for Grade III and IV patients with annual incomes less than ₹3 lakh, but not noticed any exponential rise in numbers of beneficiaries. Also, no scientific study is available to suggest the surge. The rise in cancer cases seems routine,” says Gupta.

A six-bedded Day Care Centre for Chemotherapy has been opened in Sirsa Civil Hospital two months ago. Haryana Chief Minister Nayab Saini also laid the foundation stone for the Sant Sarsai Nath Government Medical College in Sirsa on November 21, 2024, which will feature a dedicated cancer wing.

Voices in Parliament

The rising number of cancer cases along the Ghaggar belt in Haryana, especially Sirsa and Fatehabad, has been mentioned in the Parliament and the Haryana Assembly on several occasions. Congress’ Sirsa MP Kumari Selja, raised the issue during Parliament’s 2026 Budget Session, saying districts such as Sirsa, Fatehabad, Hisar, and Jind were witnessing a steady increase in cancer cases. She highlighted areas affected by the Ghaggar and Yamuna, stating that environmental and water pollution in these regions needed thorough investigation.

In the Winter Session of 2025, Selja pointed out that the pollution level in Ghaggar had reached dangerous levels, exceeding the Central Pollution Control Board criteria. There has been a steady rise in cases of cancer, Hepatitis C, skin infection, and kidney diseases, she said, adding that she had written scores of letters to the Prime Minister seeking help under the PM Relief Fund for the affected people in her region.

Selja also demanded the establishment of a super speciality cancer hospital in Sirsa, stating that it would benefit thousands of patients from nearby districts by ensuring timely diagnosis, better treatment, and proper care.

A reply to an unstarred question in the Lok Sabha by the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare in August 2025 said: “ICMR has informed that a study conducted by Kaur et al., 2024, published in Indian Academy of Sciences on human health risk assessment revealed that people dwelling near river drains are highly prone to cancer disease and hazard quotients were observed above the threshold limit that poses high non-carcinogenic risks. The results of the current study revealed that lead, iron, and aluminium exceeded the permissible limit of the Central Pollution Control Board (India).”

It further said that Ghaggar is monitored at 18 locations in Punjab and 9 locations in Haryana, and as per the water quality monitoring results for 2023, the river was found to be unfit for bathing and drinking.

Referring to the Annual Ground Water Quality Report, 2024 released by the Central Ground Water Board (CGWB), Indian National Lok Dal leader and Rania MLA Arjun Chautala had raised the issue of deteriorating groundwater quality during the Budget Session in the Haryana Assembly last year. The first-time MLA said the report had made alarming revelations. He said groundwater contamination was a serious matter and that attention must be paid to ensure testing and reducing rising uranium levels in the Ghaggar and other rivers.

Watch: Cancer courses through the Ghaggar

| Video Credit: Mohammed Almas, Shashi Shekhar Kashyap