In a major Ganga depollution campaign, Eco Friends with the help of the dhanuk community of the ghats fished out around 48 dead bodies here on World Water Day in Kanpur. These corpses and carcasses were retrieved from 10 km stretch of Kanpur Ganga starting from Shuklaganj to Siddhanath ghat. Around 15 corpses were retrieved from Shuklaganj, 7 from Chandan ghat, 6 from Dapka ghat and the rest from other ghats along the river.

After retrieving the dead bodies, these were buried in a huge pit at Budiya ghat. Around 5 carcasses were also found which were buried in a separate pit at the same ghat. The police department helped the Eco Friends members to carry out their campaign under its protection. Eco Friends member Piyush Jaiswal and his team collected the corpses floating in the stretch from upstream Shuklaganj bridge to Buriya ghat. Mohammad Owais and Abdul Shamim took care of the stretch from Buriha ghat to Deohdi ghat. The entire exercise was conducted under the supervision of Rakesh K Jaiswal, the executive secretary of Eco Friends.

In a related event, Eco Friends organized contests for the school children at Massacre ghat. Around 180 children from St Aloysius High School, Wendy High School, St Mary's Convent and The Chintels School participated in both the contests. The winner of the on-the-spot English slogan competition was Viddhi Khanna of St Mary's Convent. She wrote:
Ganga is our breath, We shall protect it till our death. Social worker Dr Naim Hamid gave away the prize to the best English slogan. The best Hindi slogan prize was given to Prakhar Mishra of St Aloysius High School by Prakash Kashwan of The Ford Foundation. The best slogan recitation prize went to Mimi Jacob of St Mary's Convent. ASP Cantonment N. Choudhury gave the prize to Mimi Jacob.

After the contest, all the school children cleaned the ghats of polythene, worship material and other trash. The ASP Cantonment N Choudhury and other police personnel also joined hands to pick up the waste and dump it in a pit at the Massacre ghat. Children were also taken on a boat rally and they displayed placards and banners during the boat rally. The children also distributed pamphlets during the campaign.

Ganga Praharis like Hari Om Shukla, Ram Avtar, Ram Kumar, Radheshyam and Dashrath and Ganga Ambassadors including Shantanu Adhikari participated in the event.

At the outset, Rakesh K Jaiswal of Eco Friends addressed the gathering and told them about the significance of World Water Day. He pointed out to the audience that Ganga can be made clean only when the youth come forward and contribute honestly in the cleaning effort.

Eco Friends members who organized the programme included Renu Pathak, Preeti Negi, Archana Jaiswal, Namita Singh and Jitendra Dixit