Five more bodies were recovered by rescue workers on Saturday from the Bhodai site of lalmatia mine under Rajmahal opencast project of the Eastern Coalfields limited (ECl), where a massive landslide on Thursday evening engulfed everything within its reach taking the total number of confirmed deaths to 16.
Five NDRF teams are on rescue work since Friday at the accident site. However, confusion over the number of missing people still prevails as there appears a huge gap between what the local police have been claiming and what reports from various sources suggest.
"We recovered five more bodies today so far which has taken the total number of deceased to 16. As per verbal confirmation from the company operating here, there were 23-25 workers on site when the accident took place. Some workers have also been reported to have had a close shave. They managed to escape with minimal to serious injuries. So, we are not expecting many bodies under the debris now, but we are not in a position to confirm any number about those missing until the rescue operation rests, finally," said Godda SP Hari lal Chouhan.
The rescue operation was reportedly stopped for some hours due to dense fog earlySaturday morning, which turned family members of those still missing and suspected to be buried under debris, aggressive. They blocked the temporary pathway made to reach the site and stopped senior officials and even NDRF team members.
Though Chouhan denied any such incident, he admitted that there was some unrest over the amount of compensation announced so far. "Some family members and workers were demanding revision of the compensation amount. The matter was later addressed after ECl officials had a dialogue with workers," said Chouhan.
In the Thursday evening accident, a huge pile of Over Burden (OB) dump the opencast coal mine at Bhodai site of Rajmahal area of the Eastern Coalfields ltd (ECl) in Godda district had collapsed. Officials said that a large heap of OB dump caved in at the entry point of the mine at around 7:30 pm when approximately 40 mining workers were on the site. locals also claimed that there was a crack in the heap of mud which collapsed and blocked the entry point of the mine.
Notably, ‘The Pioneer’ Ranchi edition in its July 3, 2016 issue in a report titled 'Mind your own safety; It's ECl way of mining!', had brought out the problem prominently. The report showed as to how the abandoned coal mine was left with hundreds of feet deep gorge filled with rain water that along with emptied gullies posed great danger to human lives and properties.