Not abandoning rescue operation, Centre and Meghalaya tell SC

Satya Prakash
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, January 21

Thirty nine days after 15 miners got trapped in a rat-hole coal mine in Meghalaya, Centre and the state government told the Supreme Court on Monday that they were not abandoning the operation to rescue them.

The rescue operations had not been abandoned, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta told a Bench headed by Justice AK Sikri – which is seized of a PIL filed by Aditya N Prasad seeking a direction to the Centre and Meghalaya government to rescue the trapped miners and put in place a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for rescue operations during such eventualities.

Mehta’s statement came after senior counsel Anand Grover, representing the petitioner, alleged that rescue operation had been abandoned and members of NDRF, Navy and other organisations involved in it were waiting for the court’s nod to call it off.

Mehta, however, said a body found in the inundated mine was unrecognisable due to decay. It was extremely difficult to take out the body without "disintegrating" body parts damaged to the high sulphur content in the mine. He also ruled out deploying a camera in the mine.

The Meghalaya Government filed a status report on the ongoing rescue operation. Its advocate informed the Bench that a body had been located at the depth of 210 feet in jeans and shit but it was highly decomposed. He said bodies of other trapped miners could also be in the same state, which was why it was difficult for the rescue team to fish out the bodies.

The Bench would take up the matter on Monday.

Located on top of a hillock fully covered with trees in East Jaintia Hills District, the rat-hole mine got flooded on December 13 when water from the nearby Lytein River gushed into it, trapping the miners. Rat-hole mining involves digging of narrow horizontal tunnels -- usually three-four feet high -- for miner to enter mines to extract coal.

A survivor of the accident had earlier said there was no possibility of the trapped miners coming out alive. Family members of at least seven trapped miners had already given up hope about their survival in the rat-hole and requested the government to retrieve their dead bodies for last rites.

On Sunday, the Indian Navy had suspended attempts to pull out decomposed body of a miner spotted last week at the depth of 160 feet as it was difficult bring it over-ground without disintegration.