A devastating explosion at an illegal coal mine in Meghalaya’s East Jaintia Hills district claimed the lives of at least 18 labourers on Thursday.
Officials report the mine utilised the banned practice of rat-hole mining, which continues widely across the state over a decade after its prohibition.
East Jaintia Hills Superintendent of Police Vikash Kumar confirmed the incident, stating rescue efforts were suspended by evening due to darkness, poor visibility, unstable conditions, and the risk of trapped poisonous gases like carbon monoxide and methane.
The suspected dynamite blast occurred at Mynsyngat in the Thangsku area, where a group of local and migrant workers were inside narrow underground shafts.
The tragedy has refocused attention on rat-hole mining, a perilous method involving the digging of tiny vertical pits, often just three to four feet wide. Miners then burrow horizontal tunnels along thin coal seams to extract coal manually.
These confined tunnels, barely large enough for a single person, necessitate the use of basic hand tools with no structural support, making the work intensely hazardous.
The practice has historically relied on child labour due to the small tunnel dimensions, with families in the economically constrained state depending on this income.
Despite a comprehensive ban imposed by the National Green Tribunal in 2014 over severe environmental and life safety concerns, the illegal activity persists.
This incident echoes past disasters in the region. In December 2018, fifteen miners perished in a flooded rat-hole mine in the same district, while a 2021 incident saw five trapped, with only three bodies recovered.
The state government contends that the region’s geology offers no viable alternative to rat-hole mining, making the ban a point of political and economic contention.
A 2022 High Court-appointed panel found the practice continuing unabated in many areas. The Supreme Court has upheld the ban, permitting only scientifically regulated mining with proper environmental safeguards.
