The earthquake of June 16, 1819. According to authentic accounts recorded in the history of Kutch, the level of the Indus went up from 3 to 30 ft, inundating a village called Sindhri and through aftershocks and over a period of time, producing an earthen dyke now called Allahband to the right of the river. Within 10 years, the river had changed course to its current location. We are still investigating and will reach definite conclusion shortly. But we do not preclude the possibility of sweet water emerging in saline parts.
Mother earth can do wonders.
After the quake, a team from CGWB reached Kutch to conduct investigations and collected dozens of samples, some of them right from the Rann of Kutch which was pitted with huge craters, some as wide as 4.5 metres. Evidence of sweet water surfaced from only two samples, one in Paya village in Kutch's Nakhatrana taluk and another in the farmland area at village Andhav near Khavda. According to CGWB, in Paya, sweet water sprang from the dry river bed of the Golati river and then spread in a radius of 10 metres, while in Andhav the water was sweet initially but turned slightly brackish after a while. Had sweet water been found in known saline water areas, it would have enabled scientists to draw more concrete conclusions about the changes that had taken place under the earth following the quake. What's more, brine in some samples was high enough to burn one's fingers.