On January 6, nine workers got trapped in an illegal rathole coal mine at Umrangso following flooding from an underground aquifer. The bodies of four of them were recovered. However, the five others had remained untraced.

“Bodies of all five workers who had remained missing for the past 44 days were found on Wednesday by rescue workers from NDRF (National Disaster Response Force), Indian Army and other agencies after the water level in the mine, which is around 300-feet deep, came down to nearly one foot,” Simanta Kumar Das, deputy commissioner of Dima Hasao, said.

The five workers who had remained missing were Hussain Ali (30), Zakir Hussain (38), Mustafa Sheikh (44), all from Darrang district of Assam, Sarpa Barman (46) from Korajhar district in Assam and Sanjit Sarkar (35), from Jalpaiguri district of West Bengal.

Following the mishap, several agencies were involved in dewatering the mine, which had got filled with nearly 100 feet of water making it difficult for divers to trace and retrieve the missing workers. The process had continued over the past month in a bid to find the five remaining workers whose bodies had not been found.

“Efforts to dewater the mine and find the workers were going on continuously. On Tuesday, NDRF divers tried to go down to the bottom of the mine but failed to get the bodies. When the water level decreased further on Wednesday, rescue workers were able to detect the bodies and recover the five bodies,” Das said.

He said that the bodies were in a highly decomposed state and were not identifiable immediately. They will first be sent to Umrangso and then to the civil hospital at Halflong, the district headquarters, where they will be kept in the morgue for postmortem and DNA analysis for identification.

Das said the deputy commissioners of districts from where the five workers belonged have been intimated to ask the family members to come to Halflong and try and identify the bodies. He ruled out the possibility of bodies of other workers remaining in the mine.

“Initially there were speculations that the number of those trapped could be more than nine. But since the mishap, we have been contacted by family members of only nine workers who had gone missing. After 44 days, there’s no possibility of other workers remaining inside,” Das said.

“Today, the dewatering of the Umrangso mine was completed to a level where retrieval operations could be launched. The mortal remains of the remaining 5 miners have been recovered and brought up from the mine shaft. The process to identify the remains has been initiated,” Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma posted on X. 

“We got a call from the Dima Hasao district administration on Wednesday evening informing that my son’s body had been found. It’d been a long wait, but we feel a sense of closure as well since we will now be able to conduct the last rites. I will be boarding a train to Assam on Wednesday night to bring back his remains home,” said Krishnapada Sarkar, father of Sanjit Sarkar (35), from Jalpaiguri in West Bengal, who was among the five workers who had remained missing.

Sanjit had not informed his family that he was going to work in a coal mine in Assam. It was only when a fellow worker called his wife on January 7 informing her about the disappearance of her husband, the family came to know that he was in Assam and had started work in the mine.

Nearly 40 workers entered the mine on January 6 for the first time this season. But within a few hours water entered the well. While around 20-25 were able to get out, at least 9 of them remained trapped in the ratholes that branches out from the main mine as the water level rose to nearly 100 feet.

On January 8, two days after the mishap, the body of Ganga Bahadur Shrestha, 38, a resident of Udaypur district in Nepal, was recovered by divers from army from the bottom of the mine. Three days later, three more bodies, Lijan Magar, 27, a resident of Kalamati in Umrangso, Khusi Mohan Rai, 57, from Fakirgram in Kokrajhar district of Assam and Sarat Goyary, 37, from Thailapara in Sonitpur district of Assam, were found.

On January 16, the Assam cabinet constituted a judicial inquiry and a Special Investigation Team (SIT) probe into the mishap. The government provided ₹10 lakhs each as compensation to the next of kin of those 4 workers whose bodies were recovered and to family members of the remaining five who were yet to be traced.

Chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma had said that around 220 mines like the one where the mishap took place are operating in the area. Following the mishap, efforts are underway to seal all such illegal rathole mines in the area and at Ledo and Margherita in Tinsukia district.

Following the mishap, police in Dima Hasao registered a case and arrested 11 persons connected to operating the illegal mine.