One body recovered from flooded coal mine in Assam, search on for others

THE BODY of a miner was recovered from a flooded coal mine in Assam's Dima Hasao district on Wednesday, two days into the search for nine men trapped below ground.

The mine, which is 300 feet (91.44 m) deep and has multiple underground tunnels, is thought to have flooded on Monday morning after miners hit a water source, according to officials and a state minister.

The extent of the flooding hampered rescue work on Tuesday, but expert divers entered the mine again early on Wednesday and were able to retrieve a body, Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said on X.

Officials have said the mine is illegal. One person has been arrested and a case was registered.

"We didn’t see the body, it was completely dark inside, we felt a body using our hands, and that’s how we were able to rescue them," one of the divers told a local news channel after the body had been recovered.

The rescue teams are taking turns to enter the mine, as the operations are underway round-the-clock, the officials said.

The army has deployed divers, helicopters and engineers to help the rescue efforts in Assam's hilly Dima Hasao district.

"It is difficult to say how long the operation will take, because we have been told there are rat holes in the mine," H P S Kandhari, a commandant in the National Disaster Relief Force, the federal agency that is responsible for such operations, told news agency ANI.

Rat hole mines, named because their tunnels are just big enough for workers to get through, were once used extensively in India's northeastern states. They were banned in 2014 because of the large number of fatalities and the damage caused to the environment.

In 2019, at least 15 miners were buried while working in an illegal rat-hole mine in the neighbouring state of Meghalaya after it was flooded by water from a nearby river.

Coal mining disasters in the remote northeastern part of India are not uncommon. (Reuters)