On the morning of January 6, when Babul Chandra Das from Tezpur, saw the news on TV, about an accident in a rat-hole mine near Umrangso in the Dima Hasao district of Assam, he became anxious. That’s where his wife’s elder brother Sanjit Sarkar, 35, had gone to work. Das and the rest of Sanjit’s family in Raichenga, a village in the Alipurduar district of West Bengal, tried contacting him over phone several times, in vain. Eventually, someone picked up the phone to deliver the news – Sanjit was indeed trapped inside the mine, which was then engulfed by water.
About 15 km from Umrangso, an industrial town in Dima Hasao, is a small village called 3 Kilo. As the last known settlement and marketplace in the area, 3 Kilo serves as the starting point for a roughly two-hour drive along a rough, dusty jungle road to Kalamati, where Assam Coal Quarry – the site of the accident – is situated.
Das, along with Sanjit’s father Krishnapada Sarkar and father-in-law Anil Sarkar, reached the site on the evening of January 7. They are currently staying in the same room which Sanjit was sharing with Rajeev Barman (39), Khusi Mohan Rai (57) and Sarpa Barman (46), all of whom hailed from the Kokrajhar district of Assam. While Rajeev managed to escape the flooding mine, his other roommates were not so fortunate. Khusi Mohan’s body was recovered on January 11, while no traces of Sanjit and Sarpa have been found.
Sanjit’s father Krishnapada told Mongabay India that the family has lost hopes of seeing him alive. “Hopefully the rescue team will be able to recover his body” he said. Sanjit is survived by his parents, wife and a four-year-old son. Krishnapada also revealed that the family wasn’t aware that Sanjit was actually going to work inside the mines. “He told us that he won’t indulge in mining work but would drive vehicles and operate cranes. He knew that if he told the truth, we would never allow him to go,” he added.
This incident is one of the biggest mining disasters in Assam, which has highlighted the dangers of rat-hole mining, a practice involving digging narrow tunnels to extract coal where the miners need to crawl on hands and feet or lay flat to navigate. This unscientific form of sub-surface mining also takes place in parts of North East India and has been banned for over a decade in neighbouring Meghalaya.
Illegal mines
Assam Coal Quarry is not the only rat-hole mine in this area. Chandra Tamang, who was working at a nearby mine at the time of the incident says that there might be more than 20 similar mines, potentially running illegal operations, in the area. “After this accident, work in all the mines stopped. Our contractor has also fled,” he said. The accident site is only a few kilometres away from Meghalaya’s East Jaintia Hills district, where over six years ago, 15 miners were trapped in a flooded mine in Ksan.
According to recent data from the government, apart from Khusi Mohan, the bodies of three other miners, Ganga Bahadur Srestho (38) from Udayapur district in Nepal, Lijan Magar (26) from Umrangso, Dima Hasao and Sarat Goyari (37) from Sonitpur have been recovered. Sarpa, Hussain Ali (30), Jakir Hussain (38) and Mustafa Sheikh (44), all from Darrang, are also still missing at the time of publishing this article. Some local residents claim that the number of people who went missing inside the mine might be higher, as the government figure is based on the claim made by the missing miners’ families and acquaintances.
Rescue operation
On a regular work day, miners would go inside the mine at 4 am for a seven-to-eight-hour shift. On January 6, the miners descended to the mine at around 4.30 am and after working for two hours, they encountered gushing water inside the 340-feet deep tunnel. Some miners escaped in time by either climbing a bamboo staircase or holding onto a trolley that carried them to the surface, while the rest remained trapped inside.
Professor Devesh Walia, Dean of the School of Human and Environmental Sciences, North Eastern Hill University, told Mongabay India, “If the mining level goes below the level of water in the nearby Kopili river, then there are sufficient chances that water in the dam on Kopili will break and flood any of the mines. Looks like a lot of water from the dam site entered through the cracks underground and filled up the mine. Apart from facing the acidic water of Kopili, the miners trapped there are also encountering lack of oxygen and formation of methane gas inside the tunnel.” Studies and news articles have reported about the acidic nature of Kopili river and have linked it to unregulated coal mining.
The rescue operation at the accident site started on January 7, and agencies such as the National Disaster Response Force, State Disaster Response Force, Coal India Ltd, Indian Army, Navy, Assam Rifles, Oil and Natural Gas Corporation and Fire and Emergency Services were deployed. Nine pumps are running to dewater the mines.
Inspector RK Singh, 1st Battalion of the National Disaster Response Force, told Mongabay India, “A total of 35 men from NDRF are currently deployed here. We are finding it difficult to move around the tunnels due to insufficient space and lack of visibility. As these mines were illegal, we don’t have any maps or blueprints to help us.”
People working in other mines nearby have come to aid the rescue operation. Saidul Islam from Darrang said, “I worked in a mine in Meghalaya nearby. After hearing about this incident, I came to see if I can be of any assistance.” Islam said that there are around 30 people like him who have come from mines in Meghalaya as well as Umrangso.
The 340-feet deep mine was initially filled with 100 feet of water. With round-the-clock dewatering, the water went down to 59 feet on January 11, but it started increasing again from the next day.
Admitting the difficulties in dewatering the mine, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said, “Somehow the mine is connected with the nearby Kopili river, because even after running our pumps for 36 hours, we are able to reduce just one foot of water. Geologists have started to survey the place and after they submit a report, we might be able to chalk out an alternative plan.”
Sarma, while initially declaring the mine as “prima facie an illegal mine”, later claimed that it was an abandoned mine earlier, legally operated by Assam Mineral Development Corporation. However, he said that the activity which took place in the mine on January 6, was definitely illegal.
Kaushik Rai, Assam’s mines and mineral industries minister, who was overseeing the rescue operation on the site, told Mongabay India that there could be more such abandoned mines around the area.
Justice Brojendra Prasad Katakey, who headed the one-person commission constituted by the Meghalaya High Court to investigate rat-hole mining in Meghalaya in 2018, told Mongabay-India, “It is difficult for me to comment about this incident, because I have not been to Dima Hasao. However, if mining starts in an abandoned mine, permission will be needed under the Mines and Minerals Development and Regulation Act. It looks like in this case, this was not done, as safety protocols were not followed. In East Jaintia Hills district itself, there are 22,000 such abandoned mines. Mining is still continuing in some of them.”
In his report submitted to the Meghalaya government, Justice Katakey has recommended arranging alternate livelihood opportunities for the miners.
Human cost
In 2014, the National Green Tribunal banned rat-hole mining in Meghalaya on grounds of the practice being unscientific and unsafe for workers. However, even after a decade, the situation hasn’t changed much for the miners on the ground, in both Meghalaya and Assam.
Meghalaya-based social activist Agnes Kharshiing, reacting to the Umrangso incident, told Mongabay India, “There are many unreported deaths in these mines. The sardar (head of the labourers) brings labourers from other states or far off areas to work in the mines. This also amounts to human trafficking…The outside world has hardly any idea about what goes on here.”
Speaking about the harsh working conditions in these mines, Justice Katakey said, “Mining mainly takes place during the winter. In one of the mines we visited in Meghalaya, we found the miners living in small huts near a mine opening with tarpaulin sheets acting as roofs.”
A miner from Karbi Anglong district near Dima Hasao, on conditions of anonymity for safety reasons, recounted his experiences to Mongabay India. He said, “I have been working as a miner for 12 years and have worked in Meghalaya, Umrangso and also Ledo in Tinsukia. We generally go in groups of 10-12 people to look for work in mines and we are hired by sardars of different mines as per their requirement. In the mines, we are not given helmets or other safety gears. We carry our own pickaxes, shovels and a torch inside the mine. The thekedars (contractors) who pay us don’t keep any records of the people working in a mine. So, if any mishap happens inside a mine, it is not possible to accurately know how many people are inside.”
When asked why they keep working in such unsafe and hazardous conditions, he said, “We can earn around Rs 1,500- Rs 2,000 a day working in a mine, which is almost double of what we get as daily wagers in cities and our villages. Also, as we don’t have much land, we can’t do agriculture either.”
Reflecting on the economics in these mines, Walia said, “The coal found in the Jaintia Hills/Umrangso belt is tertiary coal with a thin seam of two metres, which is not of the best quality. The tertiary coal is from a much recent age. This coal has more sulfur and ash content. The seam of coal is important for deciding the type of mining taking place. However, even with this coal (lower quality), they can fill up 500-600 trucks daily, each with coal worth Rs 70,000-Rs 80,000. This leads to huge profit and considering that, the amount they pay the miners is very less.”
Latest developments
The tragedy in Umrangso has another complex layer with two members of the Congress political party filing a complaint against Debolal Gorlosa, Chief Executive Member of Dima Hasao Autonomous Council and his wife Kanika Hojai, citing their involvement in the accident. However, Sarma, stated that those responsible for this mining disaster won’t be spared, and brushed off any involvement of Gorlosa and his wife in the matter.
On January 7, the police arrested Punish Nunisa, who was the leaseholder of the mine. On January 9, Hanan Laskar, the sardar of this mine was also arrested.
Nirmal Langthasa, a Congress leader from Dima Hasao, told Mongabay India that illegal rat-hole mining in Dima Hasao has become rampant from 2016. “Because of the NGT ban (on rat-hole mining) in Meghalaya, there was massive demand for coal, and rat-hole mining started outside AMDC [Assam Mineral Development Corporation] demarcated areas such as Garampani and Kota Arda in Dima Hasao,” he said, insinuating fraud.
On January 16, following a cabinet meeting, Sarma briefed the media and announced that there will be a judicial enquiry and a probe by a Special Investigation Team on the Umrangso incident. The judicial probe will be headed by Justice Anima Hazarika, a retired judge of the Gauhati High Courts. Ex gratia of Rs 10 lakh will be paid to the families of the nine miners who went missing in the mine. Sarma stated that it will take 25 to 60 days to completely dewater the mine and that the rescue process will continue.
The Cabinet has also decided to frame a standard operating procedure regarding a blanket ban on rat-hole mining in the state. Satellite imagery helped track 220 more mines in the Umrangso area, which will be closed down, in consultation with central agencies.
However, there’s no official information yet on the alternative livelihood opportunities for the miners who worked in the illegally operated mines.
This article was first published on Mongabay.
