At least three of the nine workers trapped inside a 300-foot deep coal mine in the industrial town of Umrangso in Assam’s Dima Hasao district have died, the state government said on Tuesday.

The Directorate of Information and Public Relations in the state said their bodies were yet to be recovered. Six other workers remain trapped in the mine.

Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said in a post on X that the police have registered a first information report in connection with the incident under sections of the Bharatiya Nyay Sanhita and the Mines and Minerals Development and Regulation Act.

“Prima facie, it appears to be an illegal mine,” Sarma added. “One Punish Nunisa has been arrested in connection with the case.”

The workers reportedly got trapped on Monday due to sudden flooding that left them no time to escape. Witnesses at the site described scenes of panic as the water levels rose steadily, cutting off all escape routes.

Later in the evening, Sarma identified the trapped workers as Ganga Bahadur Shreth, Hussain Ali, Jakir Hussain, Sarpa Barman, Mustafa Seikh, Khusi Mohan Rai, Sanjit Sarkar, Lijan Magar and Sarat Goyary.

“The place is very remote and is accessible through a jungle,” District Commissioner Simanta K Das had said. “We received information about the mishap at 2.00 pm. Since the place is difficult to reach, we will get the actual picture after reaching the place tomorrow [Tuesday] morning.”

On Tuesday morning, 30 personnel from the National Disaster Response Force and eight from the State Disaster Response Force had reached the site, said the Directorate of Information and Public Relations.

It added that the rescue operation had started and three bodies could be seen from the ground. However, the bodies had not been recovered as of 9.08 am.

In a post on social media platform X, Sarma said that deep divers from the Indian Navy, who had been requisitioned to assist in the rescue operation, had reached the site and entered the mine.

“The water level inside the mine has risen to nearly 100 feet, according to the assessment by the stationed team,” Sarma had said earlier.

National Disaster Response Force officer Kuldeep Sharma said that the workers were in the rat holes connected to the central pit of the mine when it got flooded, The Indian Express reported.

“It is a coal mine and there are rat hole mines at a depth of 300 feet or so,” the newspaper quoted Sharma as saying. “When the miners were digging there, they contacted some water source and damaged it, due to which it was flooded. At that time itself, using cranes and trolleys, some were rescued by locals but around nine remained trapped.”

Sharma added that the major challenge was the depth of the pit and the flooding that had taken place.

Justice Brojendra Prasad Katakey, who heads a one-man judicial commission looking into allegations of illegal mining in Assam’s Digboi forest division, also told Scroll that it was “definitely a rat-hole mine”.

Rat-hole mining has been banned in Meghalaya since 2014. It is considered to be an unscientific and dangerous technique in which workers enter deep tunnels around three or four feet high to extract coal. However, numerous instances of it have been recorded there and in other states in the North East, including in Assam.