Rescue teams on Wednesday recovered the bodies of three persons, including a senior safety officer and a young deputy manager of the Singareni Collieries Company Limited (SCCL) besides a trainee worker, who were trapped under the rubble at the roof collapse site inside the SCCL’s mechanised underground coal mine in Telangana’s Peddapalli district, in a sad end to the 36-hour-long rescue mission.
Monday’s devastating mishap in the SCCL’s Adriyala Longwall Project’s mechanised mine claimed the lives of the government-owned coal company’s Area Safety Officer Jayaraj, 56, Deputy Manager Teja, 32, and trainee worker at the Vocational Training Centre (VTC), Srikanth, 24.
The rescue teams in the first 26 hours of the rescue mission, involving around 150 personnel, managed to pull out three SCCL’s coal miners from the debris caused by the roof-cum-side wall collapse at the 86th level, more than 500 metres deep from the surface inside the underground mine.
One of the survivors, Ravinder, had a miraculous escape after being trapped under the huge mounds of debris for nearly 28 hours. He was brought out safely from the mishap site by the rescuers on Tuesday afternoon.
But the two SCCL officials and the trainee worker perished under the large mounds of coal debris even before the rescue teams traced them, SCCL sources said.
The bodies of Jayaraj, a native of Krishna district in Andhra Pradesh and Teja, of Paloncha in Bhadradri-Kothagudem district were handed over to their family members on Wednesday morning.
The distraught relatives of the deceased trainee worker Srikanth staged a sit-in protest outside the Singareni area hospital in Godavarikhani demanding adequate compensation to the kin of the mine mishap victim.
Activists of various trade unions extended their support to their demand and sought the company management to sanction ex gratia and compensation to the bereaved family of the trainee worker.
The SCCL officials held discussions with their representatives amid heavy deployment of police at the Singareni area hospital. The discussions remained inconclusive till reports last came in.
The devastating mine mishap sparked vociferous demands from several trade unions for an in-depth inquiry by the Directorate General of Mines Safety (DGMS) and also a judicial probe to unravel the exact cause of the mishap in the ALP, which is “touted” as the state-of-the-art largest mechanised underground mine in the country.
