Heavy metal pollution index is an effective tool to characterise the surface water pollution [3, 4] as it combines several parameters to arrive at a particular value which can be compared with the critical value to assess the level of pollution load. In Table 4 the methodology of HPI calculation has been presented in detail. Mean concentrations of the six heavy metals were used for the HPI determination. Overall HPI for the Subarnarekha River was found to be 49.12, which is below the critical value of 100. HPI was also calculated separately for each sampling location to compare the pollution load and assess the water quality of the selected stations (Table 5). Though overall HPI value indicates that the Subarnarekha River is not critically polluted with respect to these heavy metals, comparatively very high HPI values were obtained at S8 (72.01), S9 (82.40), S14 (73.05) and S15 (62.38). Least HPI was recorded at S1, the place near the origin of the river, and highest HPI was observed at S9 (Mango), a suburb of the highly populated, industrialised and urbanised Jamshedpur city.