Sindri: Two persons working at Eastern Coalfields Ltd (ECL)’s Khudiya Khadan mine at Mugma area in Dhanbad district are feared dead after they went missing when water gushed in from the neighbouring pit at about 3am on Tuesday. Pump operators Basia Manjhi and Manik Bauri were not found 15 hours after the incident, sources said.
The sources said 40-odd workers were in the mine for night duty on Monday. While colliery officials refused to comment about the incident, others who managed to escape from the mine said the water level inside the mine had touched 25 metres and the chances that the two have survived were slim.
A rescue team is trying to pump water out of the mine and the district administration has sought help from NDRF to find the trapped miners. Nirsa circle officer M N Mansur said the colliery management informed him about the incident about 4am and rescue operations were launched immediately. “We have also summoned an NDRF team," he added.
Nirsa MLA Aparna Sengupta (BJP) blamed ECL’s Mugma area general manager Bibhash Chandra Singh for the incident. She said a similar incident had taken place in another pit on November 27 and Tuesday's mishap could have been avoided had the management taken lessons from it. She demanded action against Singh and sought his transfer. Singh could not be reached for his comments.
Former Nirsa MLA Arup Chatterjee said the ECL management had earlier said that the mine was not operational for a long time. One of the boreholes of the mine, neither mentioned in the survey report nor shown in the map, burst, submerging the mine. While most miners managed to escape, the got trapped, he added.