Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Jan 11: As the rescue operation entered its sixth day on Saturday, the bodies of three more miners were retrieved from the flooded coal mine in Assam’s Dima Hasao district taking the total number of bodies recovered so far to four, while five labourers are still believed trapped.
One body was found floating in the water and was brought out on Wednesday.
The officials said one body was retrieved at 7:36 am on Saturday amid a joint rescue operation by the Army and the National Disaster Response Force. The deceased was identified as Lijen Magar, 27, a resident of Umrangso.
Earlier, the rescue teams recovered the body of Ganga Bahadur Sreshto, who was among the nine labourers trapped inside a 3-kilo coal quarry at Umrangso after a sudden gush of water flooded the site on January 6.
Dewatering of the quarry, which is about 310 feet deep, continued with specialised machines brought in by ONGC and Coal India. “We went to see the water level in the morning, we spotted a body, it was rescued. Two bodies have been recovered since the operation started. Water level has receded by six metres since we came here,” NDRF team commander Roshan Kumar Singh said.
The Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, who had earlier claimed it to be an illegal mine has clarified that the mine was abandoned 12 years ago and was under the Assam Mineral Development Corporation till three years ago. ”It was not an illegal mine but an abandoned one. The workers had entered the mine that day for the first time to extract coal,” he had said on Friday. He said the leader of the workers has been arrested and the police are conducting investigations into the case.
Multiple teams from various central and state organisations and all three arms of the Indian Armed Forces – the Army, Navy and Air Force – are involved in the operation to rescue the trapped labourers.
The water that gushed into the 3 Kilo Coal Quarry in Umrangsu, rescuers said, is now acidic and murky because it has mixed with coal. This has made visibility and manoeuvrability very difficult even for the team from the Navy, which includes clearance divers trained in deep-depth diving and recovery operations.
The divers from the rescue teams, they said, had to risk their lives to pull out the body that they did on Wednesday. The murky water, an official said, was making it difficult even to use remote-operated vehicles.
Another aspect that is making locating the labourers difficult is that the 310-foot deep main shaft leads to four small tunnels in the ‘rat-hole’ mine, each of which branches out, creating a large network. There is no blueprint available for the rescue teams to refer to.
A worker at the mine, Jalaluddin, had said the height of some of the tunnels was barely three feet. “There is no room to even stand, and we have to bend and mine for coal. Even when sitting, the roof is just 4-5 inches above our heads,” he said.
Mr Sarma, in a post on X confirmed the retrieval of the bodies from the flooded mine. “Rescue efforts in Umrangsu continue with unwavering resolve. Our hearts go out to the grieving, as we hold on to hope and strength in this difficult time,” he added.
Congress MP from Assam Gaurav Gogoi wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, urging him to order an SIT probe into the incident. “Illegal mining continues unchecked in Assam, fuelled by weak law enforcement and local complicity. I have written to the Prime Minister urging an urgent SIT probe to investigate this tragedy. Those responsible for this tragedy must be held accountable. Moreover, broader issues of safety, corruption, and environmental harm need to be addressed too,” he posted on x.
On Thursday night, the leader of the trapped workers was arrested, even as rescuers from the Navy and Army made little headway on the operation’s fifth day. Police said their ‘sardar’ (leader), Hanan Laskar, had fled the site soon after. Earlier on Tuesday, Punish Nunisa, the quarry’s lease-holder, was arrested.