Body found in flooded Indian mine, rescue efforts underway

The body of one miner was recovered Wednesday from a flooded coal mine in a remote district of northeastern Assam, two days into the search for nine men trapped underground.

The mine, 300 feet (91 meters) deep with multiple underground tunnels, is believed to have flooded Monday morning after workers accidentally hit a water source, according to officials and Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma.

The extent of the flooding hampered rescue efforts on Tuesday, but expert divers re-entered the mine early Wednesday and retrieved a body, Sarma announced on X. Officials confirmed the mine is illegal.

"We didn’t see the body; it was completely dark inside. We felt the body using our hands and retrieved it," one of the divers told a local news channel.

The Army has deployed divers, helicopters, and engineers to assist in the rescue operation in Assam's hilly Dima Hasao district.

"It is difficult to say how long the operation will take because we’ve been told there are rat holes in the mine," said H.P.S. Kandhari, a commandant with the National Disaster Response Force, the federal agency leading the effort.

Rat hole mines, named for their narrow, worker-sized tunnels, were widely used in northeastern India until they were banned in 2014 due to frequent fatalities and environmental damage.

Coal mining disasters are not uncommon in the region. In 2019, at least 15 miners were killed in an illegal rat hole mine in neighboring Meghalaya when water from a nearby river flooded the tunnels.