After 43 days, 1st body finally pulled out of Meghalaya mine

GUWAHATI: A joint team of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) and Navy, engaged in rescuing 15 miners trapped inside a flooded illegal coal mine in Meghalaya’s East Jaintia Hills district since December 13, made the first breakthrough on Thursday when it retrieved the body of one miner from the main shaft of the mine at 3 pm.
“The team retrieved one body from the main shaft, from about 210 feet in the horizontal passage (rat-hole) at about a depth of 355 feet, where the water level was about 170 feet.The decomposed body was carefully pulled out and handed over to the OC of Saipung police station in the presence of East Jaintia Hills civil administration officials,” an NDRF spokesman said.
Two NDRF rescuers, three Navy personnel and civil hospital staff went deep down into the main shaft to recover the body which has been dispatched to the civil hospital at Khliehriat for a post-mortem, he added. The rescue operation is still in progress at Ksan.
Teams of pump operators from Coal India Ltd, Odhisa Fire Service and Kirloskar Brothers Ltd have discharged over 81 lakh litres of water from the nearby abandoned mines since Wednesday. The highly decomposed body, which was earlier spotted by advanced gadgets, was pulled to the surface by an underwater remotely operated vehicle of the Navy. “We have retrieved the body and it is heavily decomposed,” said Santosh Kumar Singh, who is leading the NDRF in the rescue mission.
The state government has announced Rs 1 lakh interim relief for the families of all the trapped miners who had descended into the pit to dig coal on December 13 last year. The SC, which is monitoring the overall case relating to the rescue operation on a weekly basis, is scheduled to hear the matter on Monday. Several family members of the trapped miners have been camping in the area hoping to find their loved ones alive, or to at least receive their mortal remains for the last rites.
In 2014, the NGT had banned unscientific coal mining in Meghalaya. However, illegal mining and transportation of coal is still on and has a disastrous impact on human life and the environment. Labourers, mostly from neighbouring Assam and Nepal, have been digging coal at the risk of their lives in the rat-hole mines of Meghalaya. While several mine tragedies have gone unreported in the past, the latest one has been widely highlighted throughout the country and abroad.