Spility Lyngdoh Langrin, the face of resistance to uranium mining in Meghalaya, passed away on Wednesday night. She was 95, members of her family in the uranium-rich Domïasiat area of South West Khasi Hills district said on Thursday.
Ms. Langrin became a household name when she rejected a lucrative offer from the government to buy her land after the Atomic Minerals Directorate had undertaken an exploratory drilling for uranium deposits in 1993. “Money cannot buy me freedom,” she had said — to eventually motivate locals against the “environmental ills” of uranium mining.
In 2009, the State government granted permission to the Uranium Corporation of India Limited (UCIL) to undertake exploratory activities on 422 hectares in South West Khasi Hills district. The State was then estimated to have 9.22 million tonnes of high-grade uranium ore deposits.
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Relentless protests by the locals, wary of the effects of uranium mining in Jharkhand’s Jaduguda, made the government revoke the permission in August 2016.
The Khasi Students’ Union, which had backed Ms. Langrin’s resistance, mourned her death. “The matriarch who withstood the onslaught of UCIL and its agents to forcibly mine uranium in Meghalaya has departed from us. May her soul rest in peace,” it said in a statement.