The Indian Navy team on Monday (January 13, 2024) moved out of the site of the flooded rat-hole coal mine in Dima Hasao district of Assam where five miners have remained trapped since January 6.
The bodies of four miners, including a Nepal resident, have been retrieved so far.
District officials said the almost unchanged level of the murky water in the 90-metre-deep mine made it difficult for the Navy divers to operate.
Nine pumps operating simultaneously from the ill-fated mine and three abandoned ones nearby helped bring the water level from 30 metres to about 12 metres on Saturday, dropping by only 0.3 metres subsequently.
“The murkiness of the water and the angles of the tunnels are beyond the capability of the Navy’s remotely operated vehicle to see and navigate. The tunnels are too narrow for the divers, who cannot remain underwater for more than 11 minutes at a time, to go in with air tanks and other gear,” an official monitoring the rescue operations said.
“Dewatering continues with other agencies still trying to locate the other trapped miners,” Dima Hasao’s District Commissioner, Simanta Kumar Das, said.
Personnel of the Army, the paramilitary Assam Rifles, the National Disaster Response Force, the State Disaster Response Force, Coal India Limited, police, and the local administration are engaged in the rescue operations.
The pit is in Kalamati, part of the 3 Kilo area under the Assam Coal Quarry. It is about 30 km from Umrangso, an industrial site where limestone is also mined to feed a cement plant.
The mine, which Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said was abandoned 12 years ago after being controlled by the Assam Mineral Development Corporation, is one of several – active or abandoned – in the area close to a massive reservoir of a Central hydropower corporation and the Kopili river, which partly forms the border between Assam and Meghalaya.
FIRs lodged
On Sunday, an organisation named the Halali Progressive Welfare Society, comprising former cadres of disbanded extremist outfit Dima Halam Daogah, lodged a first information report at the Umrangso police station against Debolal Gorlosa and his wife Kanika Hojai.
Mr. Gorlosa is the Chief Executive Member (CEM) of the North Cachar Hills Autonomous District Council, which governs Dima Hasao, a Sixth-Schedule district.
The organisation accused the duo of defying bans on rat-hole mining by the National Green Tribunal and the Supreme Court to operate the illegal mines in the Umrangso area. “These illegal activities are not only in clear violation of judiciary and statutory directives but have also resulted in significant loss of human lives and environmental degradation,” the FIR read.
A similar FIR was filed by Sarmindar Karbi Apei, an apex body of the Karbi ethnic community, at the Umrangso police station against Ms. Hojai, accusing her of involvement in illegal coal mining activities along with Punish Hojai, one of two arrested in connection with the mishap so far.
The other person arrested is Hannan Laskar, a local financier of the mining operations.
Members of the Congress’s Dima Hasao unit also filed an FIR against the CEM and his wife on Saturday.
