Miners trapped in Meghalaya: SC to take up PIL on Thursday

Tribune News Service
New Delhi, January 2  

The Supreme Court on Wednesday agreed to take up a petition seeking a direction to the government to take urgent steps to rescue 15 miners trapped inside an illegal coal mine in Meghalaya for almost three weeks.

The PIL will be taken up on Thursday. 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.

The PIL filed by Aditya N Prasad was mentioned before a Bench headed by Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi for urgently listing a direction to the Centre and other authorities to put in place a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for rescue operations during such eventualities.

The Bench, including Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul, agreed to hear it on Thursday.

A survivor of the accident had on Saturday 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 bodies for last rites.

On Thursday last, the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) had, however, contradicted media reports which had quoted it as having said that the trapped miners were suspected to be dead on the basis of a foul smell that divers encountered when they went inside the mine.

NDRF had said the foul smell could be due to the stagnant water in the mine as pumping had been halted for more than 48 hours.