Divers from the Indian Navy came out of the Meghalaya mine on the 17th day of the operation which is intended to rescue 15 miners who have been trapped in there since December 13. The divers were unable to retrieve the miners as they couldn’t reach the ground level that went too deep.

Santosh Kumar Singh, Assistant Commandant of the National Disaster Response Force, said that the water level was estimated to be more than 77-80 feet in the vertical shaft of the coal mine in East Jaintia Hills district. The miners who have been trapped in the rat-hole since December 13 ended up in the spot after water from the nearby Lytein river gushed into it. The non-availability of a mining map and the proper equipment made it challenging for the rescuers to perform the operation.

The family members of a few of those miners have given up hope on the rescue operation. A person from the Magurmari village stated that he just wants the bodies of his brother, son, and son-in-law, who have been trapped in the rat-hole, for the last rites. A survivor of the flood added that there was no way the 15 people were going to make it out of there alive.

The Navy divers think that the search for the trapped members will be feasible when the level of the water is drained out further. “At present, the site is cleared for the Odisha firefighters to start draining out the water from the main shaft where the miners are trapped. The firefighters are setting the high-capacity 100 horsepower pumps in nearby abandoned mines to enable to operate the pumps,” said one of the divers.

Even though it is being speculated that the miners could be dead based on the foul smell that was detected by the divers inside the mine, the NDRF have positively stated that the smell could arise due to the stagnation of water as well, since pumping had been halted for over 48 hours.