India’s Meghalaya mining crisis finally makes progress in its search for 15 missing miners

• After a month of searching, the search for the 15 miners in Meghalaya finally seems to have yielded results.
• The underwater remotely operated vehicle (ROV) spotted a body 160 feet into a ‘rat hole’ mine that was flooded by the Lytein River.
  
• The body is being brought out under the supervision of doctors and the search continues for the 14 remaining miners.

The Meghalaya mining crisis in India finally seems to have made progress after over a month of searching for the 15 miners trapped in an illegal rat-hole mine. The Indian Navy spotted a body 160 feet into mine using its underwater remotely operated vehicle (ROV).


The body is being brought up to the mouth of the mine under the supervision of doctors — and the hunt is still on for the remaining 14 miners.

The efforts to rescue the miners were halted altogether two weeks into the operation when the pumps available to the state government gave out under stress. It was only then that firefighters from Odisha and the Indian Navy were called in to help.

Even Coal India Limited and Kirloskar Brother Limited stepped in to offer high-capacity submersible pumps to help with the process.

The flooding from the Lytein river created a situation that even Indian Navy divers couldn’t go deep enough to access the rat holes until the water in the mine was taken out.

Dangers of mining practices in this part of the country is exactly why the National Green Tribunal (NGT) banned mining in Meghalaya in 2014. Despite the ban, mining practices have continued. In early January, two miners died in an illegal ‘side cutting’ mine in another part of the state.

Here’s a quick look at the Meghalaya mining crisis: