Meghalaya police told to hunt down financiers of illegal coal trade

GUWAHATI

The police in Meghalaya’s East Jaintia Hills district, the hub of rat-hole coal mining, have been told to go beyond the labourers to hunt down financiers and owners of the illegal coal trade.

The crackdown followed widespread criticisms of the Conrad K. Sangma-led State Government for “enabling” the illegal operations and a directive from the High Court of Meghalaya seeking “immediate, effective, and stringent action” against those involved in a series of mining accidents, including the February 5 dynamite blast, in an illegally operated mine that has so far claimed 27 lives.

East Jaintia Hills District Magistrate Manish Kumar, invoking Section 163 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, imposed a total ban on the assembly of five or more people around illegal mining sites in the Thangsko area. His order, seen as an admission of a lapse in ground-level intelligence, said there was evidence of continued illegal extraction from social media inputs and local complaints. It tasked the magistrates with “identifying” the mine owners and financiers, believed to wield immense political clout.

The district administration, noting the possibility of local groups or individuals trying to obstruct law enforcement, dismantle machinery, or destroy makeshift camps of miners to hide evidence, authorised the magistrates to seize all vehicles, tools, and equipment used in the mining operations and initiate proceedings under the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act.

Since February 6, five teams comprising executive magistrates, police personnel, and officials from the Directorate of Mineral Resources have seized 6,904 metric tonnes of coal from various locations around the fatal mine, along with tools and equipment used by miners.

Vikash Kumar, the district’s Superintendent of Police, said the seizure of 63 detonators from individuals from Assam and Tripura underlined a “well-established supply chain” feeding the illegal mining industry. “We are dismantling all labour camps in the area and asking the people to leave. There will be no scope for illegal mining anymore,” he said.

Meanwhile, the operations to rescue any survivors among the trapped miners or retrieve their bodies continue. Nine miners undergoing treatment for burn injuries in a hospital in Shillong, about 115 km from the blast site, remain in a serious condition.