“Please help us to get his body, that’s all we’re asking,” was the appeal from Yeayha Hussain, the uncle of 26-year-old Anowarul Islam Barbhuiya, one of the labourers who is believed to have died along with others in a rat-hole mine accident in Sutnga elaka of East Jaintia Hills.
Barbhuiya was a resident of Narzatpur, in Assam’s Cachar district, which is not far from East Jaintia Hills.
Rat-hole mining has been illegal in Meghalaya since 2014 but it continues with high-level patronage.
Hussain told Highland Post that the family had managed to get the phone number of the Deputy Commissioner, E Kharmalki, and begged him to do everything to get back the body of his nephew.
“Jo Hona tha ho gaya, khali hamara larka ka dead body nikal dijye, uska bibi hai, do sal ka bachhi hai, ma, baba, ek bar uska muk dekhega” (Whatever has happened has happened, now please get his body for his wife, two-year-old infant girl, mother and father who are waiting to see his face for the last time,” he had told the DC. Hussain also said that the DC had given him special permission to enter Meghalaya from Assam (otherwise banned due to the Covid-19 pandemic) on humanitarian grounds.
Hussain told HP that they had heard only rumours but came to know for a fact that his nephew had died in the mine only after they barged into the labour contractor’s family home desperate for confirmation last night. The contractor, or sordar as they are locally known in the coal mining area, is known as Nazim Uddin of Karimganj, he said.
They had first tried to reach Nazim over the phone but it was switched off. Through the contractor’s family, they were able to contact Nazim, who reportedly told Hussain that Barbhuiya had died.
“Nazim told us that the miners were down in the mine when water flooded the tunnel as they struck into the tunnels of another mine,” Hussain said.
This morning, at around 7am, Nazim again told them that they would try and recover the miners’ bodies after he took some injured labourers to the hospital.
Hussain and his family are doing their utmost to ensure that the Meghalaya government takes a call on getting Barbhuiya’s body out.
“We went to the Superintendent of Police of Cachar, we went to our MLA also to ask them to help us,” he recounted.
Barbhuiya was a carpenter and had been recruited by Nizam in mid-April and was promised that coal mining would be more lucrative.
“He had no work due to the uncertainty of the Covid-19 situation, no means to provide for his family, so when offered work, he willingly went,” his uncle explained.
Meanwhile, there are fears that the East Jaintia Hills district administration, to allegedly please “their masters,” has already wiped out evidence of coal mining activities around the mine. Sources said that the heavy machinery and labour camps have been removed already. Now, they are trying to say the labourers and sordar came on their own to dig for coal, it is alleged. Knowledgeable sources, however, say that this is eyewash as nothing in Sutnga can be done without the word of powerful mine owners who reportedly enjoy full political patronage.
Hussain was contacted by HP after following up with Karimul Bari, a student activist whose Twitter post tipped off the public about the lethal mine accident, which otherwise would have most likely been swept under the carpet.
