New Delhi: Six people were charred to death and four injured in a fire that broke out inside a ‘rat-hole’ coal mine in Nagaland’s Wokha district on January 25.
According to The New Indian Express, the exact cause of the fire was not known. Officials suspected that the generator exploded due to a leakage while some locals claimed gas released from the mine caused the inferno, it said.
The newspaper has quoted police officials saying no safety measures were being followed in the mine. Even fire extinguishers were not available at the time of the incident that happened in the Ruchanyan village of the district. The deceased belonged to Assam’s Devipur, Sonapur, and Dayalpur villages which lie on Assam-Nagaland border.
The Hindustan Times has said two people – owners of the mine – have been arrested.
Nagaland MLA Achumbemo Kikon has been quoted by The Hindu as saying to a local TV: ” This is not the first coal mine accident in my constituency and it will not be the last if the government does not take stern steps for scientific mining.”
The Naga People Front’s MLA Kikon alleged that the ‘illegal’ rat-hole mining had been going on for quite some time and he had even raised the issue with the state government but to no avail.
“The State government must take pre-emptive steps so that proper guidelines are followed and coal extracted scientifically, causing minimum damage to the environment. Otherwise, the system will collapse,” he said as quoted.
Rat-hole mining – a method of extracting coal from narrow, horizontal seams – is banned in India as per a 2014 order of National Green Tribunal because it has been causing the deaths of miners because of the risks involved. However, it continues to be operational in an illegal manner. In a similar incident in Meghalaya in 2018, 15 miners were killed.