Meghalaya mine tragedy: Body of one of 15 workers detected, says navy

Shillong: Almost a month later, after the Meghalaya Mine Tragedy, the Indian Navy has detected a body of one of the mine workers, 270 feet below the surface using a underwater remotely operated vehicles. A team of 10 Indian Navy divers has been on the job for the last 3 weeks.

"One body detected by Indian Navy Divers using Underwater ROV at a depth of approx 60 feet and 210 feet inside a rat-hole mine," the official Twitter handle of the Indian Navy, stated.

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Though, the second tweet came with some amendments, "The depth is 160 feet (and not 60 feet) and the body has been pulled upto the mouth of rat-hole mine and shall be extracted out of the mine under the supervision of doctors," the Navy said.

On December 13, 2018, an illegal coal mine in Meghalaya's East Jaintia Hills district had collapsed and water from the adjacent Lytein river gushed in, leaving at least 15 workers trapped.

At least 200 rescuers from the Navy, National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), the Odisha Fire Service, State Disaster Response Fund, States Fire service and others from Coal India Limited (CIL) and Kirloskar Brothers Ltd (KBL) are involved in the multi-agency rescue operations.

The rescue operations were making little headway after the water refused to recede despite attempts to pump out the same using high-powered pumps.

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However, from last 3 weeks Indian Navy divers had been searching for bodies trapped in Meghalaya Mine Tragedy but on Thursday morning, after 32 days the tragedy, the body of one of the miners had been detected 210 feet inside a rat-hole mine.

The body was retrieved by Indian Navy Divers after it was detected using Underwater ROV at a depth of approx 160 feet and 210 feet inside rat-hole mine. They are trapped inside since December 15 last year.

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